I used to be a passionate gamer, and I often find myself nostalgic for the golden era of video games when there were new ideas popping left and right.

Now, it feels like we’re caught between long-delayed triple-A titles and a constant stream of indie platformers. Originality seems to have taken a backseat, with many games regurgitating the same concepts.

What do you think defined the golden era of gaming? Are we currently in a rut, or is there a chance for fresh ideas to emerge again?

OQB @[email protected]

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    10 hours ago

    Being real, now.

    The combination of things like the steam deck, and the major bump that it gave to gaming on Linux alongside the fairly trivial ability to emulate, this is an amazing time to be a gamer.

    Well, if you ignore the current hardware issues brought on by bullshit. But even that’s not a big enough problem to negate the sheer diversity of options we have to game.

    • w24@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      13 hours ago

      I have to agree with this. Steam has facilitated an explosion of amazing indie games. Even if you have a potato PC, you can still pick up Balatro, Loop Hero, Cave Story, Slay the Spire, and more.

      The era I’m personally most nostalgic for would be the late 90’s. But as you now have the ability to emulate any of those games, I don’t see how the generation they originated in could be better than this one.

      Correction: Sentence flow. I’m tired

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        10 hours ago

        Yeah, late nineties had some seriously great games. I sometimes get nostalgic for the gen before that too. The SNES in particular had mariokart, and we played a ton of that here. Me, my mom, my sister, and my partner at the time would just dog each other on it lol.

        Strangely, I don’t get much nostalgia for the older console games from when I was a kid. Now, arcade games, holy crap. I’d love to have pacman and centipede machines in particular, if I was stupid rich. There’s something super immersive about the machines that doesn’t hit the same with clones. Besides, the track ball on centipede was just so much a part of the gameplay that it isn’t fun without it for me.

  • Jumbie@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    We are not in a rut. Nostalgia has a tendency to color how good games used to be.

    Sure, there were fantastic stories but there are also fantastic stories now.

    Console gaming in particular has been so good in this generation. Discard the constant internet noise, turn off others’ opinions; settle into a modern game that fits your tastes and see how good it is.

    I’ve played some remakes that come close to the nostalgia I remembered. For example, Resident Evil 4 was one of my absolute favorite games but replaying it a year or two back was a slog. The remake fixed that for me and even introduced me to VR, which is a future a kid version of me used to dream about. No video can explain it but if you experience this game in VR you will be amazed. Changed, even.

    As for new games, Ghost of Yotei was a new bar set for me. Everything about that game was perfect even though it was built on its successor.

    Multiplayer/social aspects of gaming are a godsend to us as gamers. It’s in a bad place right now but when Destiny 2 shined, it made other games struggle for visibility next to it. I’ve made lifelong friends playing that game, something that was really hard to do pre-social gaming.

    So no, we’re not in a rut. I think we just need to disconnect from the internet negativity feedback loop and just enjoy the game in front of us. The best part is this: if you don’t like the game, you have a literal library to pique your interest.

    It’s a good time for gaming.