The future of retro gaming

[nakamura]

You are missing nothing.

[HalcyonDaze00]

360 Live users are no doubt familiar with Microsoft's two marketing tools that are regulars on the dashboard: SentUAMessage and The Monday Musing.

I've had XBL for almost 5 years now and I've never even heard of those!

me neither.......

[FatTrucker]

I don't agree that autosaves and checkpoints are indicative of poor design. These mechanisms are there by design. The whole point is that the developer a) Wants players to be able to remain immersed and be able to progress, In any story driven campaign it does kind of dissolve any atmosphere when you're playing through the same level for the 20th time because you can't progress, and b) they actively want players to be able to complete games nowadays. Why would you spend xxx million quid on development, scripting and hiring professional voice actors then design the game in such a way that only 10% - 15% of the people who buy it get to see it?. The clever part about the design is where they can make a game challenging enough that you feel involved but not prohibitively frustrating to the point where you lose any sense of empowerment or atmosphere. In all honesty I would say in that respect the design is far more clever and subtle in many titles nowadays as that's a fairly fine line to walk.

Certainly where games have any kind of interesting plot, narrative or gameplay, I want to be able to enjoy it, not just reach a point where its endlessly frustrating, removing any further play value from the title because the flow of the game has been ruined. With games that can routinely run into tens of hours, days and even weeks of play time (if played through completely without stopping or dying), the absence of autosaves and checkpoints would render them virtually unplayable.

[FatTrucker]

360 Live users are no doubt familiar with Microsoft's two marketing tools that are regulars on the dashboard: SentUAMessage and The Monday Musing.

I've had XBL for almost 5 years now and I've never even heard of those!

me neither.......

SentUA whatnow? *shrugs*

never come across any of that on live. In common with most users I suspect, I only tend to use My Xbox, the Marketplace and my Friends list, don't even look anywhere else.

[Crunchy]

COD is no different to any game, old or new. You can make it as hard as you like through self-imposed restrictions if you want. Set yourself a time limit, limit your arsenal, one-life it, whatever. The hand holding isn't in the game, it's in the player's mind. The biggest bane in gaming is the player's constant need to be led by the nose and told what to do and how to play. The second biggest bane in gaming is the developer's constant indulgence of this. Achievements on the 360 have really brought this to the fore for me. The reliance on given milestones and the thinking that there's nothing else to be had, seriously weak sauce.

Perhaps then I imagined the lengthy tutorials at the start of the COD games I've played? Perhaps I imagined all the prompts to do the blidingly obvious, and exactly which buttons to press to do them at certain points throughout the single player campaigns? Perhaps I need to go to Specsavers (again)? I'm the first to admit that my vision isn't great after all. Could've sworn they were periodically flashing up on screen right until the very end though. With any luck, Nurse will bring my medication around soon and make the visions go away.

What point are you trying to make here exactly? Because if it's that you can't make a game harder for youself through self-imposed limits because the game has a tutorial at the start and has signposted objectives you really are talking out of your arse.
Here's the challenge: Modern Warfare 2, Veteran difficulty, no deaths allowed or it's back to the start, pistol only unless another weapon is specified by the game. Off you go.

[FatTrucker]

The thing with CoD, certainly since they splintered into the Modern Warfare games is that they are ostensibly designed as a multiplayer title. The single player is there largely as an enjoyable showcase and if necessary familiarisation tool but the MW games are based on and largely sold as multi-player affairs. Thats where most of the value and challenge lies with these titles and pretty much any gamer of even the most casual persuasion is aware of that before they buy it. Buying a MW game and complaining about the lack of challenge in Single Player is like buying Counterstrike, or Unreal Tournament and making the same complaint.

Getting back to the idea of 'challenge'. I've been playing a lot of Torchlight over the last week or so (XBLA Dungeon Crawler in the same vein as Diablo). It has a Hardcore mode that means when you're dead, you're dead. No backtracking, no reloading, your character is dead, make a new one and start again.
Now I've put maybe 30+ hours into the game with the character I'm using. If I was playing in the hardcore mode and faced with having to play through another 30+ hours of the same campaign and levels to get back to the same point and level, TBH at that point the game would get turned off and likely never played again.

So removing autosaves and checkpoints would work for games where score is the defining factor, but for all other titles they simply wouldn't work without them IMO because games nowadays simply offer so much content. Going back to 8, 16 and even many 32 bit titles, if you persevered and became proficient enough, most could be played through and completed within 2 or 3 hours. Perfectly reasonable to have limited continues because you're never more than 60 minutes or so from where you left off, even when restarting from scratch.

[Crunchy]

I've had XBL for almost 5 years now and I've never even heard of those!

me neither.......

SentUA whatnow? *shrugs*

never come across any of that on live. In common with most users I suspect, I only tend to use My Xbox, the Marketplace and my Friends list, don't even look anywhere else.

Lads, lads, do keep up! Microsoft spend a lot of money trying to brainwash you with this stuff. This is where your £40 a year goes! They do this for you!

And it's worth taking a look at such hamfisted marketing efforts for the comedy of it. It's the same sort of comedy you get from perusing your workplace's in-house magazine.

[Gabe]

The games industry currently isn't concerned about you or me wanting to play their games years into the future, they're only interested in making money now, and then moving onto the next big thing and making us all move with them. Once they all realise how they should have done things to sustain interest and profits longer term, it'll be too late and many games will be lost to the ether, with a lot of people not even remembering or caring about them any more.

When has the industry *ever* not cared about making money? Publishers back then didn't care about you playing their games in the future, either. And why should they? Playing an old game means not spending time and money on a new game. What other industry purposely *wants* you to stick with what you have?

And the number of times Darran/Craig et al have said a certain person doesn't want to talk about games they made back in the day - they aren't interested in you playing their games either.

Likewise the collectability of isn't of interest to them, being (I'd say) a very niche part of the gaming landscape.

[FatTrucker]

The games industry currently isn't concerned about you or me wanting to play their games years into the future, they're only interested in making money now, and then moving onto the next big thing and making us all move with them. Once they all realise how they should have done things to sustain interest and profits longer term, it'll be too late and many games will be lost to the ether, with a lot of people not even remembering or caring about them any more.

When has the industry *ever* not cared about making money? Publishers back then didn't care about you playing their games in the future, either. And why should they? Playing an old game means not spending time and money on a new game. What other industry purposely *wants* you to stick with what you have?

And the number of times Darran/Craig et al have said a certain person doesn't want to talk about games they made back in the day - they aren't interested in you playing their games either.

Likewise the collectability of isn't of interest to them, being (I'd say) a very niche part of the gaming landscape.

Exactly. The only real difference now is that they want to retain control of that old content as the advent of online portals and marketplaces have shown that old IP can still have value, and is very easy to distribute with little or no costs beyond server maintenance and compatibility updates.

Without a pre-owned market it would be very easy for publishers/manufacturers in future to retain control of their game libraries and make them available forevermore via DD on any future consoles rather than watching all those pounds frittered away at bootsales, on ebay or in GAME's pre-owned section.

Being able to play games beyond their commercial shelf life has never been on the agenda where development, marketing, publishing or any other aspect of gaming is concerned, the fact we've been able to, is not because they made it so, rather because they didn't care enough to prevent us from doing it.

Its only recently when looking at ways to address the issues with the burgeoning 'pre-owned' business being done by all major games retailers, that they're beginning to realise if they can actively prevent it in future, apart from helping with new current gen game sales, it will also create another market they can exploit for very little overhead in the future in terms of re-releases and updates of older games on new hardware.

[vintagenintendo]

I tend to think that there will be a defined cut-off for retrogames. Your newer systems usually allow you to play thier older systems games. Its not like you can pop a 8bit cartridge in your wii. Plus I just think there is a certain feel to firing up a atari or nes/snes nintendo that you just can't get from emulators and wii updates.

[felgekarp]

I can't be the only one that watches Jessicas Strategize videos on Xbox Live can I, it's usually the highlight of my wednesdays

[nakamura]

I don't agree that autosaves and checkpoints are indicative of poor design.

They certainly cover up poor design when used too frequently. Devs do not need to worry so much about the spacing of enemies and items because if you give people endless 30 seconds ago restarts they aren't going to notice. MW1 had this in spades, coupled with respawning enemies which is poor design.

Don't get me wrong. Nothing wrong overall with the system, it just is often used so liberally. Yes you can ramp up the difficulty level but if you add hundreds of checkpoints it doesn't really aid the feel of progression and it takes away some of the challenge for me.

[ShadowNeku]

I can't be the only one that watches Jessicas Strategize videos on Xbox Live can I, it's usually the highlight of my wednesdays

Shes so hot it makes me want to throw myself into the tv.

Anyway, whats this about Sentuamessage being a brainwashing marketing tool? Its nothing more than a show to inform you on upcoming releases and content coming your way. Even if it is used to help push sales, isnt any trailer or advertisement anywhere doing the same?

[thesubcon3]

Exactly. The only real difference now is that they want to retain control of that old content as the advent of online portals and marketplaces have shown that old IP can still have value, and is very easy to distribute with little or no costs beyond server maintenance and compatibility updates.

Without a pre-owned market it would be very easy for publishers/manufacturers in future to retain control of their game libraries and make them available forevermore via DD on any future consoles rather than watching all those pounds frittered away at bootsales, on ebay or in GAME's pre-owned section.

Being able to play games beyond their commercial shelf life has never been on the agenda where development, marketing, publishing or any other aspect of gaming is concerned, the fact we've been able to, is not because they made it so, rather because they didn't care enough to prevent us from doing it.

Its only recently when looking at ways to address the issues with the burgeoning 'pre-owned' business being done by all major games retailers, that they're beginning to realise if they can actively prevent it in future, apart from helping with new current gen game sales, it will also create another market they can exploit for very little overhead in the future in terms of re-releases and updates of older games on new hardware.

So then the retro game market will essentially die out at a certain console generation. I could actually see that as a good thing since there would finally be a cut off. It would save me tons of money collecting games, that's for sure. But I enjoy it so it will still be disappointing.

The downside is that it would bring about an entirely different gaming market where we play games and delete them as we would be limited on the space available. It's kind of how we had issues with the internal memory on the 3DO and Sega CD, but instead of sacrificing saves we will be sacrificing games. Sure they will be available to re-download, but only as long as that console is viable. Once that system's life is up, then the games will be near extinct.

[sg1000]

The future? You mean the past