~Games Today


The State of Games Today- An Opinion

I have been using computers for about fourteen years, starting with 
a Spectrum and moving onto an Amstrad CPC and now a 120 MHz Pentium.  
I use them for serious reasons and for playing games. 
 
But it is not the state of computers I want to talk about, it is the 
state of games today.   There appears to be a widely held view that 
while graphically games have improved massively,  there’s no denying 
that they have,  gameplay has suffered and that older games whilst 
graphically inferior had greater gameplay, and that games have 
become more expensive.  All this seems to feed into a retro gaming 
feeling where an Arcadian golden age of  games existed when every 
release was chockerblock full of gameplay and would keep you playing 
for months on end, and all for a tenner. While it is true that games 
were cheaper, there was just as much dross around then as there is 
now.  

The gaming scenario we are now in is one of change and constant flux 
caused by the availability of more powerful machines, which is an 
exciting situation to be in, but there will be an awful lot of 
graphically beautiful but horrendous games coming out.  It is up to 
the games buying public to single out the quality games from the 
games that should go straight into the bargain bucket, and to not be 
taken in by slick visuals and advertising.  

As for prices the software companies are going to charge what they 
think they can get away with.  Remember they are not producing games 
simply for the fun of it, they’re in it for profit, and they were 
trotting out the same reasons for increasing  prices as they did ten 
years ago when the Amiga and ST came out, which were increased 
development, distribution costs, and piracy.    Admittedly these 
reasons may be true to a point, but I have noticed that whenever 
there is an increase in affordable hardware while the hardware 
prices tend to come down the software prices have gone up.  Once 
again it up to us the software buying public to exercise our right 
not to buy products that appear to be overpriced.  

Anyway that's enough rhetoric happy gaming.


(Dominic Corby)