Lots of great points here, and as much as I'd love to blame the mostly internet-driven Cult of Agile I gotta agree on the other factors.

Another item worth considering, that several posts touched on without explicitly calling out, is that the insane level of information overload in the 21st century has led to a much less pure entertainment experience--be that movies, games, books, whatever. Back In The Day one could come home from school or work and have a few quiet hours to play their game, but now for most that time is getting interrupted by all manner of digital incubi whispering sweet nothings 24/7.

Although I agree with aspects of OP, there has also been many, many Early Access titles that have benefitted immensely from the EA system and enabled the devs to have the funds to expand and perfect the game. Yes some do exploit the system by shitting out barely playable early prototypes with a "please pay for the rest of development k thx" message, but just as many understand the benefits and use it to polish and expand already good games.

Well I see the merits of the key argument I think it ignores a lot. For one thing the internet has done to games the same thing it’s done to music. It’s democratized the whole industry. One person with $500 worth of equipment can release a product to the same distribution platforms as large corporations. For that reason there is a huge volume of available content, some of it just as good as any other game that’s been made before.

The other thing is that nostalgia often clouds people’s recollection of how things were at the time before. Using music as an example again, there are lots of people who will say music from the 70s was better, that’s cause they are remembering their preferred hits from that decade and aren’t considering the fact that those preferred hits are a small percentage of music released from that decade, most of which not very good music. The same nostalgia effect occurs with games from 90s. People remember the games they enjoyed playing and forget that for each one of those there were dozens of other games released that were hot trash.

Really? Tell that to games like Daggerfall, Master of Orion/Magic, UFO: Enemy Unknown etc., that were released in a very buggy state.

*falls through the floor*

What happened with internet was the availability of patches at ease. In the past a patch was something you could find only in magazines or preinternet groups etc.

I can agree with the OP idea but the reality can be more complex. Games in bad state were also a reality in the past, but it is true that today is mad and the day one patches are more common. I can't think in a single modern game that did not need a patch to fix something serious in a week or less.

But I say the reality can be more complex because today the patches are something strongly demanded by the players. If no patch, the game is critizised as abandoned at launch.

The launching of a game can be rushed and unpolished in a lot of titles but the users hate to wait and demand the game right now, more complexity and more content with same developing time.

Shareholders can press developers to publish the game but they are only the mirror of the market/users. If you do not launch it, a different company will launch a similar game during the campaign to compete. And/or Because the users will be demanding it now.

The fast availability of internet to find a patch or a fix could make developers lazy solvng things in games that should have been in a better state previously at launch date. But the same availability gives the fixes faster. There are old games that never were fixed or polished enough. Or its patch was lost in the limbo.

So, Who nows, probably internet ruined everything, indeed. I can't be cathegorical.

I think the heart of why older games are superior is because gaming hadn't gone mainstream yet. Another user has touched on how AAAs are extremely expensive nowadays, but this is a symptom of gaming going mainstream, as is the internet requirements and content distribution of so many current games.

Re: the "that's just nostalgia" argument that always pops up. No, not necessarily. Sometimes the older thing can simply be better, and the newer thing can't reach the standards of the old one. In the case of games we can see somewhat objective measurements like amount of offline content, polished quality of initial release, etc. Granted, it is still one's subjective preference over what type of criteria to value, but once you figure out what you value, it is easy to compare individual old games with individual new games along those lines and in many cases the new games simply do not measure up.

Hmmm text adventures?

When I said 25% i was thinking more 16bit era games, Genesis and SNES. When visually it was competent, but didn't outweigh the game itself.

Reminds me. The first game to get me into RPG's was Phantasy Star 4. It had little cut-scenes and full images to fill in details at key points. But it was more or less the same formula, with awesome music. Though the combat system could use tweaking. At least you could do macros (preplanned action sets).

I mean, games have ALWAYS had bug in them. They used to send out floppy disks with fixes on, or in some cases, issues them wholesale.

The difference we have now is how connected everyone is and how large Triple A dev is. The bigger the game, the more room for bugs. One small bug that looks meme can go viral and then everyone sees it as a major issue, when infact the bug is rare.

Even so, some devs release a game in great shape, others not. I don't think CP77 should be held as the default as they clearly had years of issues around, and with, the game. Plus...European (and in a lot of cases, Japanese) dev tends to focus on concepts first rather than production. Though, CDPR has been moving closer to Western-style dev since Witcher 3 blew up

Phantasy Star 4 is modern enough that it has more of a story focus than earlier RPGs. Games like early Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy 1 and 3 (and 2 to some extent), Phantasy Star 1-3, and even early SaGa were not big on story. It's only when Final Fantasy 4 came out that JRPGs started being more focused on story. (WRPG's big game was Ultima 4, which led to a shift in focus in that series, though there were still big changes later, as Ultima 4 is as old as the original Dragon Quest IIRC.)

I remember several games in the 90s and 00s that were very buggy when they were released. So I say your theory is wrong.

I especially remember the egoshooter "Sin" from Ritual games. It was almost unplayable when it came out. Only after a few huge patches (for that time), it was enjoyable. Some magazines had those patches on their CDs back then. I ordered mine directly from Publisher Activision's customer service, and they sent me a CD with the patch via mail. I still have that CD.

And does anyone remember the disastrous release of Ultima 9 in 1999? It was so full of bugs, it was absolutely unplayable.

So do you agree?

Yeah, happens often in the Daggerfall dungeons, falling to the emptiness...

And at the back of the hull in the "small" ship.

Interesting theory, I can buy that.

Either I'm old and jaded, or most AAA games today really do suck compared to the PC golden ages of 1992 - early 2000s. I'm leaning toward the latter.

I still use DOSBOX to play DOS Games daily - Aces of the Deep, Silent Hunter, Warcraft, Doom, Wolfenstein, LucasArt games, etc.

Games back then had so much charm and character and I've always wondered why that is, and I think it's a combination of:

1) DOS games back then didn't cost an arm and a leg to produce - an artist and a few programmers could create whatever game they dreamed up of with a limited budget and resources.

2) Memory/Hardware limitations meant that programmers had to be creative in what they focused on, and since animation/graphics were the most-demanding on resources, this meant that more focus was on gameplay, AI, catchy soundtracks, level-design, storyline, etc.

3) There is something to be said for pixelated artwork - it just exudes "hand-made" charm.