Why have game developers lost their imagination?

[Jarhead0331]

^Very interesting...certainly adds to the mystery.

[W8taminute]

This has me thinking.  Is there a market for taking old games and renovating them to today's UI and graphics standards whilst maintaining the imaginative gameplay they were originally created as?

Kind of like 'Flip this house' but instead 'Flip this game'. 

[Gusington]

^Definitely...like the Age of Empires series "Definitive Editions" as well as the Warcraft and Resident Evil series, just to name a few.

[smittyohio]

There is no shortage of indie crap out there.

Could be that many gems get lost in the weeds.

[Jarhead0331]

There is no shortage of indie crap out there.

Could be that many gems get lost in the weeds.

I get down and dirty into those weeds just about every day. Its rare that a gem gets missed, but I suppose anything is possible. I think if the next great Star Fleet II was out there, I would know about it.

[SteveW]

.....There could also be a perception that the barrier to entry in just 'doing it yourself' is a lot higher than it used to be. I can't actually speak for what it was like in the early days because I wasn't there (maaan), but perhaps it wasn't as difficult to try and self-teach the skills to make these low-tech games? I could be wrong on that.
...

I was a software developer at the time. However, I was not a game developer, but I did dabble. All in all, IMHO the job of game developer was probably harder in those days. This is because there was no concept of a "game engine" at the time. You had to pretty much program everything from scratch. If you wanted to support a mouse, you had to often build your own routines for mouse behavior. UI had to be hand crafted. Need a database function? build it yourself. Then their was the nightmare of lack of standardization on the PC side. Sound cards and video cards often needed custom tailored interfaces. If you needed to optimize your game, you had to dabble in assembly language, or even machine code..not for the faint of heart. You also did not have good ways to get patches to your customers, so none of this "Early Access" stuff. The game had to substantially work by the time you put it in a box.   

I think because of the proliferation of very good, inexpensive and easy to learn game engines. things are much easier now.

Yes, completely agree. In the 1990s I was a C++ developer on 16 bit Windows 3.1. That was far more low level and easier to screw up than my current preference of C# on Windows 10. Programming these days has a lot less overhead, allowing you to concentrate on design.

[Rayfer]

Dare I post this.. :-[...I'm on the other side of this issue. GOG excited me when it came out but I haven't bought anything there is awhile.  Nostalgia, to me, proved to be a huge disappointment.  The old games  were let downs and can't hold a candle to the newer games we have now.  For example I'll take Age of Empires III and Xenonauts over the original Master of Magic and Xcom and day. Again, this is just my experience.  I try not to confuse imaginative with complexity...they are two different things.  One of the deepest, layered, complex games I've played in years is the recent Field of Glory: Empires with its introduction of decadence and legacy, and porting of battles to Field of Glory 2 are quite novel in how they impact the gameplay. Anyway, I think imagination is still there, but it's hidden within the glut of new releases that dwarf the old days in numbers.

[Jarhead0331]

Dare I post this.. :-[...I'm on the other side of this issue. GOG excited me when it came out but I haven't bought anything there is awhile.  Nostalgia, to me, proved to be a huge disappointment.  The old games  were let downs and can't hold a candle to the newer games we have now.  For example I'll take Age of Empires III and Xenonauts over the original Master of Magic and Xcom and day. Again, this is just my experience.  I try not to confuse imaginative with complexity...they are two different things.  One of the deepest, layered, complex games I've played in years is the recent Field of Glory: Empires with its introduction of decadence and legacy, and porting of battles to Field of Glory 2 are quite novel in how they impact the gameplay. Anyway, I think imagination is still there, but it's hidden within the glut of new releases that dwarf the old days in numbers.

I know what you mean about the GoG phenomenon and the let down of revisiting older games that just have not held up over time. However, that is not really what I'm talking about. While I agree that revisiting older games can often times be disappointing, I'm confounded by why games today, for the most part, are not made with the same love, attention to detail and depth, that seems to have been more common place in the 80s and 90s. Quite frankly, I am just as let down by new releases these days, as I am by revisiting older titles released on GoG.

[Millipede]

Thanks for starting this thread Jarhead. I'm enjoying some of the, fresh to me, insight although it can be a bit depressing. Keeping my fingers crossed that Microprose can return to their days of glory. 

[hellfish6]

This has me thinking.  Is there a market for taking old games and renovating them to today's UI and graphics standards whilst maintaining the imaginative gameplay they were originally created as?

Kind of like 'Flip this house' but instead 'Flip this game'.

Ubisoft ("Anno" series) and 2K ("Mafia") think so.

[WW2 tactics]

It's the same in all entertainment industries. The rinse repeat formula that is driven by profit and deadlines by the big kahunas. They become black holes sucking in all the "talent" attracting them with financial stability (the golden handcuffs) and some ideas just can't seem to take off without their support. I think that nowadays people also have a higher standard of what they consider gems and what they can overlook and a jack of all trades is a master of none so they might just hit the mark on 1 or 2 of your set stipulations of what a gem is. Just my 2 cents.

[Father Ted]

There is another important point. The number of successful interesting gameplay elements is limited. In some genres, they are already almost all used.

I think this is an pertinent factor. In the infancy of PC games, designers could branch off in any direction, limited only by the available technology, but as they did so, they "used up" the innovations.  Perhaps an analogy could be that there are no great explorers about these days - there are  a decreasing amount of places to discover on the planet.

Also, I think the "wow" factor we experienced when we first came across a type of PC game is a stronger emotion than when we play the next iteration of the genre.  For example, I've often seen the opinion that CMx1 games are better than CMx2.  Objectively, it is hard to see how that could be true - the latter has a better UI, controls, graphics, flexibility of units, etc.  Yet I think that players were blown away by CMx1, because it offered something so completely new and so that experience formed a strong positive memory.  Playing CMx2 offers the same (arguably improved) gaming experience, yet because it is not so novel, the emotional impact is not so positive.  Hence it is regarded not so favourably.

And another thing (while I'm waffling on with cod-psychology), when you are forced to use your imagination in experiencing something it creates stronger memories.  Games with less realistic graphics and sounds and so on induce the player to use his or her imagination more than some of flashier games, so they tend to stick in the memory better.  In my case I'd cite CO2.  It's a game where square counters move over a contour map and there are only very rudimentary visual and sound effects.  This means that I tend to imagine what is happening to the pixeltruppen as the counters move and their status changes, rather than have it graphically laid out before me.  So, I think I enjoy and remember CO2 battles more because of its lack of graphical flashiness than despite it.

Therefore I think it could be the case that older games were not necessarily better or more innovative than today's, but that, for various reasons, we remember them that way.

[Gusington]

Nostalgia is a really strong emotion.

[Father Ted]

Nostalgia is a really strong emotion.

Hmmm..I wasted a lot of words, didn't I?

[RedArgo]

when you are forced to use your imagination in experiencing something it creates stronger memories

I totally agree with this, some of my best memories are games like North Atlantic '86, War in the South Pacific, Zork, games with crappy to no graphics.  Also, I was 40ish years younger and could remember things.