[Mika]

So the overwhelming vibe I'm getting is that you haven't played or read any of the stuff you're complaining about.

I see an easy solution here. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader.

Huh? The whole point of the thread is that the modern stuff isn't interesting!

Answer me this question: How many ****ty modern books or games would I need to buy until I would be allowed to call them **** in your eyes? Ten, twenty? The old proverb goes, if it looks like ****, smells like **** and feels like ****, it probably is ****.

Your rant about books is symptomatic. We don't get epics any more, we get popcorn novels! Authors aren't writing with something to say! Meanwhile you've got R. Scott Bakker making his brutal philosophical points over there, you've got Iain Banks delivering epics on the nature of reality over there, you've got Richard Morgan unleashing his rage on the injustice of society over there, you've got George R. R. Martin producing these vast intricate opuses over there...

In the time it's taken you to complain in this thread you could've googled for good modern authors and gotten something to read.

Where did you come to that conclusion that I don't read modern authors - how could I otherwise complain about modern literature? By my own standards, I wouldn't have any justification. Of the authors you listed, only Martin is interesting to me. But even Martin isn't up to par when compared against what I used to read. There are some modern historic novels by Iggulden and Cornwell too, while good, simply cannot be compared to the older stuff. Pratchett has been able to mix some thought into comedy in his books, they are imaginative and sometimes start to surface philosophical questions, but never dare to go deep enough, probably to keep the comic appearance. George Orwell has plenty of good material that has depth, not only his books, but his reviews and short stories too. But he can't be considered modern author.

And why do you think I don't read book recommendations or reviews? I constantly find I need to read the reviews in my native language, that seems to be the only reliable way. Yes society and background are important factors here. Here's a couple of questions for you to answer by yourself:

• How many times have you been infuriated by the stupidity of the protagonist?
• How many times have you find a situation in a book that makes even you manliest men (of the men) laugh and cry at the same time?
• How many times has a book really made you depressed?
• How many times has this happened in a single book?

[Mika]

By the way, Scalzi's Old Man's War sounds amusing, but it remains to be seen whether I consider that exceptional book. I'll take a look at it if I can find the translated version. The same applies at least for Stephenson's Anathem. At this age I realize one thing: the best sci-fi books I have read discussed the possibility of something what could be happening now or in the near future. Modern sci-fi seems to be aiming further away, and when looking back at sci-fi books 20 years ago, I don't remember them that well compared to the sci-fi books that applied to near future.

[The E]

But it's true too. I haven't read that much science fiction, and it is not a large factor in the whole broad range of literature. I even put the sci-fi books I have read for you to see and compare. If there is a book that is better than those I listed, I'd like to read it too. But as with gaming, I think there is something odd about the current authors if I find books written hundred years ago considerably better than the new releases. Computers should ease up writing of truly epic novels, but what we actually get is more pop-corn kind of books. I can't escape the feeling that the former books were written because the writer wanted to tell something - it might have been a general philosophical argument of something in life, or just human nature itself. Current books are more about writing for writing's sake, i.e. to keep the author alive. I don't mean that I would despise their work of researching the backgrounds or minute details, but it seems that the books aren't in any ways touching any more. That is to say, the heart is missing.

Here you are, making a very broad, very generalized statement about a subject that GB (as an SF writer) has something of a stake in. Don't be surprised if the answer you get is a bit on the harsh side.
Also, if you honestly believe that current writers are only in it for the money, you really haven't talked to many writers.

By the way, Scalzi's Old Man's War sounds amusing, but it remains to be seen whether I consider that exceptional book. I'll take a look at it if I can find the translated version. The same applies at least for Stephenson's Anathem. At this age I realize one thing: the best sci-fi books I have read discussed the possibility of something what could be happening now or in the near future. Modern sci-fi seems to be aiming further away, and when looking back at sci-fi books 20 years ago, I don't remember them that well compared to the sci-fi books that applied to near future.

Near-Future SF is alive and kicking, and there's some very interesting stuff happening there. Charles Stross' Halting State, Richard Morgans' Market Forces, or Neal Stephensons' Cryptonomicon should be on or at least near your reading list. Personally, I'd say that near-future SF is as big or maybe even bigger than the Far-future, space opera stuff.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, clearly no grounding in modern trends. The whole lens of SF has been moving closer and closer to the present over the past decades, and that movement has been formalized as Vinge's Singularity concept. Gibson stopped writing stuff in the future and started writing stuff in the present day because everything he wrote came true.

Check back in when you're caught up with what's actually happening.

[Thaeris]

By the way, introduce FS2 to your friend who has been playing consoles the last couple of years. Let him play through the training missions and see how many times he fails (my friend failed twice, once for touching the controls when told not to do so and the second time in missile evasion). Then let him play the first mission at the Normal difficulty. My friend died three times on the first head on fight on the first mission and gave up! 

Boy I was surprised to see that! I would think avoiding the shots would be self-evident, but for some reason that thought didn't cross his mind.

Oh God, it's true.  

I had a friend back when I went to Embry who was quite into FPS games like Half-Life, and could not wrap his head around FS1. It didn't help that his laptop didn't have a numeric pad, but he pretty much just rage quit after a few tries at the training missions. Somehow following simple instructions or customizing your keymap is hard...

On the bright side, I guess I should be a bit proud - I wowed him into trying it while flying an Athena and ripping Shivan fighters to pieces with Avenger cannons and dumbfire rockets. More impressively, this was Vanilla FS1, not the port.

Lastly, if my suggestion was interesting to you, Mika, here's Spiderweb's site:

http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/

If you're curious to try something, just find a demo.  

[Hades]

Geez, that's pitiful. I managed to beat FS1 a few times over when I was six (same for FS2) :<

[Thaeris]

Indeed Hades, indeed...

...But he was very proficient at Portal.

[Mongoose]

I can't speak for the sci-fi side of things, since I'm not exactly well-read there, but Mika, a lot of your complaints about gaming seem to come in the form of holding up games as a whole to hardcore combat flight sims, which were a niche segment of a niche genre even when they were somewhat more prevalent.  Comparing vastly different genres, or even vastly different levels of the same genre, simply doesn't make any sense; holding up something like Ace Combat to Falcon 4.0 tells you about as little as holding up a crazy-complex RPG like Baldur's Gate to Super Mario RPG.  It's an apples-to-doorknobs comparison.  I think what you may not realize is that games at the accessibility level of a Falcon 4.0 simply won't ever get a massive audience; hell, I've been playing games for the majority of my life, in all different genres, and I don't think I'd be interested in such a game myself.  What may seem ideal for you simply doesn't work for the vast majority of people out there; that's just a simple fact of life.

On a related note, there's a great video series on The Escapist called "Extra Credit" that dedicated a recent episode to the common complaint about modern games being "too easy."  I pretty much completely agree with the main point the video makes, that games should strive to be as accessible as possible up-front, yet contain a great deal of depth as you delve into them.  It's often said that chess is a game that takes a minute to learn, but a lifetime to master...the same concept can be applied to video games as well.  Flinging a player straight into a game that requires them to manage dozens of controls and systems that they can only master after reading a hundred-page manual represents flat-out bad game design.  Getting the player acclimated to the game environment at first is a good thing, as it provides encouragement for early progress and teaches the player the skill set they'll need to progress.  Portal is perhaps the ultimate example of a brilliant game tutorial in action: each concept is introduced in turn, and before the player knows it, they're able to pull off crazy-complicated maneuvers without batting an eye.  This is the sort of thing that the game industry should be shooting for if they want more and more people to share in our favorite pastime.

(Oh, and as the video notes, even games which appear extremely simple may hide amazing depth once you start to poke around.  The Pokemon series, games that six-year-olds could ostensibly pick up and understand, has this crazy-complex set of character attribute and breeding rules that literally requires mountains of spreadsheets to puzzle out.  And the brilliance of it is that a player never has to touch any of it to beat the game if they don't want to.)

[Unknown Target]

Games these days are...cliche. There's a lot of duplicates out there, and the problem is everyone thinks they're original by creating yet another FPS...except it all boils down to "bad guys pop up and you kill them". Chalk a lot of it up to us (really the people who grew up with the very first games that actually weren't **** - like Doom, Command & Conquer, Half Life, Freespace 2, etc) growing older and just getting tired with seeing the same stuff over and over again. If you think about it, there's a lot of kids out there who are just getting into gaming and they don't even have a conception of what games are like - Halo, COD, etc, are all "holy **** I've never seen this before" whereas for a lot of us we've seen it all done before. That doesn't necessarily mean either is bad (well, except for COD/Madden/Halo/Final Fantasy clones which are just basically reskinning the same game over and over again (also read: every single Japanese RPG) - THAT is frustrating), it just means that we have to find more interesting stuff. The problem is really that the game industry has been taken over by the mainstream, so most of the "big boys" only go for this massive market, whereas most of the indie crowd think, and I actually read this on a forum on Gamedev.net: "...indie games don't have the resources to do anything unique or creative, so I'm going to just do the best modern shooter I can".

Back when a lot of us were growing up, the overhead for what was considered a "good" game was a lot lower - it was more about the gameplay than the graphics. Since most people react to "pretty" more so than deep gameplay (especially on a console where the latter is extremely hard to do because of the limited controls), that's what everyone goes straight to when they think of what a "good" game is. Indie games are starting to make a  resurgence, but again people just kind of don't do 3D unless they can do it super-duper amazing with normal maps/bump maps on every bead of sweat on each individual character's face - so all we get are boring platformers that are just REALLY old formulas recycled with an interesting twist (BRAID).

tl;dr; games aren't getting more boring, you're just getting older. Unfortunately no one out there is making unique stuff for us to enjoy because most of our generation is getting into the industry and instead of forming their own studios, they're going to work for the big ones because that's what college and parents and everyone older than them has told them that's what they need to do to be successful. I.e. if you don't come up with a million dollar idea in college you're doomed to work in whatever job your degree entitles you to for the rest of your life.
If you want to see more interesting games, make them yourself. You know what the best part is? All these younger folks today will be blown away by the older games. I showed my gf (freshman in college now) Freespace 2, and she was blown away by how complex it was and how good the voice acting was. That being said, the controls really are too complex and really are too stupid. Games are getting more streamlined and easier to understand when it comes to manipulating them - that doesn't mean the gameplay elements have to get simpler.

[mxlm]

Unfortunately no one out there is making unique stuff for us to enjoy

Portal says hi

[Unknown Target]

Unfortunately no one out there is making unique stuff for us to enjoy

Portal says hi

WHOA.
WHOA.
HOLD UP.

I MADE A GENERALIZATION.
AND I WAS WRONG IN A SPECIFIC INSTANCE.

WHOA.

Btw, you also forgot Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2, Audiosurf, Mass Effect 1 + 2, any racing game by Codemasters, Wings of Prey and more.

Do you feel smarter now, though? You totally destroyed my argument.

[Ransom]

Answer me this question: How many ****ty modern books or games would I need to buy until I would be allowed to call them **** in your eyes? Ten, twenty? The old proverb goes, if it looks like ****, smells like **** and feels like ****, it probably is ****.

Do you honestly believe that the proportion of ****ty to excellent books wasn't just as overwhelming in the Good Old Days?

The funny thing about consuming old media is you rarely hear about the mediocre or the forgettable ones. I wonder why that is.

[TrashMan]

Then, of course, there's a new Touhou release at least once a year... but that's kind of a niche here in America. Meh, whatever. They're fun games with clever dialogue and awesome music.

 

Touhou is the work of the Devil

[mxlm]

Do you feel smarter now, though? You totally destroyed my argument.

Yes, and I think you did that yourself, respectively.

Incidentally, characterizing indie gaming as being all about platformers is odd. Whatever your genre of choice, the odds are good there's a strong indie showing in it.

[Unknown Target]

Do you feel smarter now, though? You totally destroyed my argument.

Yes, and I think you did that yourself, respectively.

Incidentally, characterizing indie gaming as being all about platformers is odd. Whatever your genre of choice, the odds are good there's a strong indie showing in it.

Cheers boopseekins :-3

[Dark Hunter]

Touhou is the work of the Devil

[Thaeris]

Again, I love indie games, and I can't think of any platformers that I play.

If I want to get a hold of a wargame, I'll go play Combat Mission. Battlefront.com is amazing... I've already noted my choice in RPGs...

I do confess that a lot of the other games I play are based off the work of larger, more stable studios. FreeSpace is an obvious example, as is FreeFalcon. Of course, there's a few things I make use of now which are from companies that used to be "indie" which are now much more in the spotlight - X-Plane is a great example.

Being an indie title doesn't limit one to mediocrity by far - if I had the nerve to stomach playing Penumbra myself, I'd do it! Though, as I've said, I can't seem to have the guts to play it, after watching Let's Plays of it on the net... damn son... Excellent visuals, sound, physics, storywriting - it was like watching a film - a very creepy one. And even if it's not my style, it represents what indie games ought to be and often are - innovative, cerberal, and thoughtfully crafted.

[Mika]

I don't know about catching up the sci-fi trend with the books you guys recommended, by a brief survey they don't seem to get that good ratings here. Of the sci-fi authors listed, only Stephenson's books are recommended. But don't worry, I have noticed this trend before in other fields of literature so it's nothing new for me. I'll pick up Stephenson's Anathem if I can find it. It seems to get the best ratings, and the synopsis itself seems interesting. Gibson's current writing style and themes sound average to me, so I'll skip that. I could read Neuromancer if I get a chance to find it from the bookstore. I might check Morgan's Market Forces too, even though the plot is said to be lacking in there. And as a side note, Battuta is not the only writer here.

Logic tells me that the published books had to be better earlier. The reason is simple: it took a lot more work to write one. So yes, there has probably been many bad books before, but the ratio between good and bad ones is becoming worse nowadays.

Back to gaming then, what should we think of the new players who find Freespace too complex? Do you think it is so?

Unknown Target, I think your first post summed quite a lot of things that I feel. It was a good one! The reason I'm saying the games are too easy nowadays is because I think they are too easy, not because they don't have good tutorials or that they have deep mechanics. If I can solve puzzles just by looking at them (no to need use brain), then they are too easy. Unfortunately, the preferences of the majority seem to disagree with me. Which is the reason why I started the topic and asked if other people from the same generation feel the same. I wonder if the guys now at their 40s felt the same around 2000...

If you want to see more interesting games, make them yourself.

I was afraid you'd say that But on the otherhand it is also true. Mods start to look more and more interesting.

[Mika]

I forgot, it was funny that the Escapist clip had World of Goo as an example of easy accessibility. I can concur with that. It is original and vivid game with a non-existent learning curve.

But it was also too short and too easy. In this case (oh the irony), I hope they make a longer and slightly harder sequel.

[The E]

Logic tells me that the published books had to be better earlier. The reason is simple: it took a lot more work to write one. So yes, there has probably been many bad books before, but the ratio between good and bad ones is becoming worse nowadays.

Wrong statement is incredibly wrong. As was pointed out earlier, the reason why older books seem better is because the vast majority of old books isn't around anymore. Only the very best books have survived and get recommended, all the mediocre stuff simply gets forgotten. Just because it might have been more physically exerting to write books doesn't make them better.

But it's probably no use to point it out again. Arguing against someone who is already pretty set in the "old == better" mindset is useless. Seriously.