Scots Taffer on 28/2/2008 at 08:53

---

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_video_gaming) 1998 called back for it's title of Best Gaming Year On Record, please collect the charges.

I mean COME ON. Fuck me. There's no contest.

On a personal level some of my favourite games came out in this year -
Rainbox Six: totally fucking awesome counter terrorism realistic shooter
Metal Gear Solid: brings the whole tactical stealth thing into the mainstream
Grim Fandango: the high watermark of adventure gaming, characterisation, atmosphere and
Half Life: totally innovates FPS gaming, sets the HIGHEST watermark for FPS gaming
Thief: say no more

Plus tons of games that hit the wider gaming world in a huge way: Unreal (sets a high watermark for FPS gaming for some), Fallout 2 (highly anticipated sequel), Starcraft (koreans, whatever), Baldur's Gate (nineteen thousand nerds lost in dark rooms forever) and expansions of games too.

Scots Taffer on 28/2/2008 at 09:13

---

uh

Papy on 28/2/2008 at 09:21

---

No, I meant gaming in general, at least from my point of view. You know I have no interest for easy pastimes or interactive entertainment that we now call games, so you can guess that I find most new video games boring, particularly consoles games.



You are wrong. Most games in the 80's had very little marketing budget. At best the publisher would buy a few ads in magazines, but that's about it. For a lot of publishers, marketing meant paying for shipping a copy of their games, with maybe a fruit basket, to a magazine in the hope of having a review or something in the news section. Even for big games, the marketing budget was far too small to control anything. Independent retailers were controlling the market, and independent magazines were controlling the information.

The Internet solved the distribution problems, but what is difficult now is finding information. The few magazines still alive, and their "journalists", a now nothing but whores. Of course, I guess some still have integrity and competence, but how can I know which one? If I had a lot of time on my hands then I guess I could find it, but to be honest I have other things to do than spend 50 hours to find a game I will play for 15 hours.


You obviously didn't understand what I was saying.

Matthew on 28/2/2008 at 12:23

---

1998? Damn son, 1999 is where it was at.

Papy on 29/2/2008 at 00:41

---

Your point wont get across for the simple reason you are not talking about what I'm talking. You seem to consider only a very limited subset of games from that period, while I mostly exclude this subset.

I was also there in the 80's (I'm 8 years older than you). I won't deny there was ads in the 80's. If you read my previous post, you'll see that I even said this! Although some magazines, like "Jeux & Stratégie", had very few, others like "Tilt" were full of it. BTW, I still have some of these old magazines, and I still read them when I want to have fun and play with an old game (the number of shitty games from that period is astonishing, so without my old magazines and their reviews I would really waste my time).

I obviously won't deny there was mainstream games in the 80's, some tested a bit with "focus groups" before being released. I won't deny some games were the result of marketing (instead of marketing being the result of the need to sell an already made game). But in the 80's, publishers were not able to control retailers, magazines and every developers. The market was mostly open and made with independent developers. The result was if we wanted something different than a mainstream arcade or kiddy game, we could find what we wanted without too much difficulties.

Anyway, not all games, not even the majority as soon as we leave the console world, were produced with marketing in mid. Most were only the author's vision, and no focus group came anywhere near the game design. Do you really think a game like The Sentinel was developed according to the taste of a focus group? Take a game like The Last V8, which I guess was supposed to be a mainstream action game... Do you really think it could have passed the test of a focus group?

Again, I'm not saying there are no good games anymore. I even believe games, on average, are now much better now than what they ever were. The problem is finding them. I'm now playing with Gothic 2 NOTR. It's a great game. Yet, how I found this game was certainly not "easy". I bought the highly praised Oblivion, found it to be a shitty game, and read comments from people saying Gothic was better. I read Gothic 3 reviews, most saying the game was shitty, but bought it anyway, and found it to be much better than Oblivion. I then read comments from people who thought the previous Gothic games were much better, bought Gothic 1 on ebay and loved it. JoWooD decided to re-release Gothic 2 NOTR, I bought it and I'm now playing the game.

The game I bought before that was Trackmania United. I found the series because of a friend. Again, the reviews were not that great, but my friend insisted, so I tried it. It certainly was not love at first sight, but I had some time to lose so I played a bit with the demo. It turns out this series is now among my favorites.

Last year I stumble upon Shrapnel Games. I found this publisher because of an argument on the Internet. I was going to say that there was no strategy games anymore (RTS are not strategy games to me), but before I decided to do a bit a research... and I found the publisher's site linked somewhere in a badly designed wargames fan site.

How did I find a good game (according to my taste) in the 80's? Well, I was buying a few magazine each month, spent an hour reading reviews, went to a store, asked the owner to order the game for me, wait two weeks, and... that's it! No need to spend hours on the Internet using google to search for some bits of information, no need to try demos after demos in the hope of finding something interesting.

Oh, and please, stop playing the critic who's trying to find a vintage year in video game. This is futile. You also sound ridiculous when you come up with something like 1981. Most video games from that period were fun in the context of arcades and putting quarters in a machine for 5 minutes of gameplay, trying to beat your friend or the machine's high score, but nothing more. Seriously, would you pay $50 for Ms. Pac-Man now?