Adventure Forums - View Single Post - So the 00's are over. How would you rate gaming in this decade?

taterfyrings · 01-10-2010, 09:10 AM

The first years of the decade was in my opinion terrible for a few reasons.

First, the adventure genre seemed dead with even Lucasarts canceling their adventure games in developement (Sam & Max and Full Throttle).

Second, the strategy genre which had been evolving steadily during the eighties and early nighties, became increasingly stale and were "institutionalized" into the "dune 2"-model which made us see no more new innovative games like Imperialism, X-Com and Pirates. Instead strategy games became synonymous with RTS, which is a fun genre, but killed of the innovation. Luckily, there have been one bright light for strategy gaming during this decade, that is, the paradox games. However, by now, even they are getting stale and unimaginative.

Third, piracy have steadily been killing of the traditional pc-based genres like the mentioned adventure and strategy games, and have pushed developers to the consoles, which is a problem because

Fourth, the development of the console wars were in my opinion were bad for the industry. First, the Dreamcast with its highly innovative games lost out early on, while the gamecube by Nintendo also did very poorly. Of the two traditional console makers, Sega was gone, and Nintendo widely considered to go the same way in a few years. This meant that the companies that have always been about innovation and games imaginative games were on their way out, to make room for Sony with the boring "new console, better graphics"-perspective and very traditional game production, and M$ with its Xbox who is only pumping out FPS's like Halo, which leads us onto the

Fifth and final point, which is how first person shooters, over the top-action games, and generally M-rated games increased in both critical reception and popularity, which made less rooms for both traditional genres and new games that focus on things like innovation, mature themes (no, Gears of War is not a mature game even though it has the M-stamp), puzzle-solving etc.

I would however say, that this bleak start of the decade have grown into a much lighter end. The popularity of the DS, and the following success of the Wii shows that there is an audience for games that are different, imaginative, and gameplay-based, and have also made great tools for adventure games to finally become more popular on consoles, while digital distribution and companies like Telltalle have almost single-handily put adventures back on the map for the PC. And then we also have the retro-wave that has hitted with the virtual console, Mega Man 9, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Project Needlemouse, Street Fighter 4, Tales of Monkey Island etc that shows that a lot of gamers wants to go back an age not only dominated by graphics, gore and shooting.

All in all, the end of the 2000's have given a lot of hope for the future, and hopefully, the trends we are seeing now will continue well into the next decade!

01-10-2010, 09:10 AM	#7
taterfyrings Junior Member Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 22	The first years of the decade was in my opinion terrible for a few reasons. First, the adventure genre seemed dead with even Lucasarts canceling their adventure games in developement (Sam & Max and Full Throttle). Second, the strategy genre which had been evolving steadily during the eighties and early nighties, became increasingly stale and were "institutionalized" into the "dune 2"-model which made us see no more new innovative games like Imperialism, X-Com and Pirates. Instead strategy games became synonymous with RTS, which is a fun genre, but killed of the innovation. Luckily, there have been one bright light for strategy gaming during this decade, that is, the paradox games. However, by now, even they are getting stale and unimaginative. Third, piracy have steadily been killing of the traditional pc-based genres like the mentioned adventure and strategy games, and have pushed developers to the consoles, which is a problem because Fourth, the development of the console wars were in my opinion were bad for the industry. First, the Dreamcast with its highly innovative games lost out early on, while the gamecube by Nintendo also did very poorly. Of the two traditional console makers, Sega was gone, and Nintendo widely considered to go the same way in a few years. This meant that the companies that have always been about innovation and games imaginative games were on their way out, to make room for Sony with the boring "new console, better graphics"-perspective and very traditional game production, and M$ with its Xbox who is only pumping out FPS's like Halo, which leads us onto the Fifth and final point, which is how first person shooters, over the top-action games, and generally M-rated games increased in both critical reception and popularity, which made less rooms for both traditional genres and new games that focus on things like innovation, mature themes (no, Gears of War is not a mature game even though it has the M-stamp), puzzle-solving etc. I would however say, that this bleak start of the decade have grown into a much lighter end. The popularity of the DS, and the following success of the Wii shows that there is an audience for games that are different, imaginative, and gameplay-based, and have also made great tools for adventure games to finally become more popular on consoles, while digital distribution and companies like Telltalle have almost single-handily put adventures back on the map for the PC. And then we also have the retro-wave that has hitted with the virtual console, Mega Man 9, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Project Needlemouse, Street Fighter 4, Tales of Monkey Island etc that shows that a lot of gamers wants to go back an age not only dominated by graphics, gore and shooting. All in all, the end of the 2000's have given a lot of hope for the future, and hopefully, the trends we are seeing now will continue well into the next decade!