My grandpa says that in an alleged 'golden' era of gaming, an EA sale was something he would have actually clicked on, if clicking on sales had actually existed.

[ReamedBySteem]

Discuss.

[ReBoot]

This is the 3rd discussion about the same topic I remember personally.

There's two parts here:
1. A gaming has become worse and worse during the last couple years. Doesn't mean there's no great games or great sales, it's just that big name companies don't have them. I do however think "your own fault" if someone insists to stick with big-name A gaming and complains about a lack of good games.
2. You guys really need to take off your rose-tinted glasses. Crappy shovelware has been in existence since the dawn of video games as commercially-viable media. ET single-handedly caused the great video game crash of the 80s and the amount of ♥♥♥♥ I've been sipping through in the 90s at that store which let us playtest 8-Bit cartridges before buying them I can't begin to describe in words. Let's say, Steam's storefront during it's shovelware heyday wasn't shocking.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

The golden age of gaming was in the 90's. There is no what or if about it.

Now, would I choose to play again the most buggy games of the 90's over the shovelware of copy and paste games we have today?

Sure. I liked those Sierra games. Most of them are true classics even by today standards.

Edit:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

ET single-handedly caused the great video game crash of the 80s

That's factually false. As someone who has beaten that game as a 6 years old I can assure you it was a great game. Very similar in gameplay and scope to what was actually widely available back then. What caused the crash was stupidity and greed... And the fact that they made a few million cartridge too many for the actual demand.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Eagle_of_Fire:

That's factually false. As someone who has beaten that game as a 6 years old I can assure you it was a great game. Very similar in gameplay and scope to what was actually widely available back then. What caused the crash was stupidity and greed... And the fact that they made a few million cartridge too many for the actual demand.

Allow me to paraphrase then. ET was a huge part of the videogame crash of the 80s, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ games as well as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ marketing & ♥♥♥♥♥♥ videogame companies aren't an invention of the last couple years.

[Kargor]

Yeah, it's people's fixation on the self-proclaimed "AAA" mega-corps.

And I'm not even saying their games are necessarily bad; EA and Ubisoft just isn't my cup of tea anymore. I have thumbed-up stuff from Bandai, Sega, Square-Enix etc. though. Thumbed-down too (EA and Ubisoft are doing "better" there -- if a game doesn't appeal to me then I'm not even buying it, so no thumb-downs). And then there's tons of games, both thumb-ups and thumb-downs, from companies that aren't associated with any of these.

You just have to look outside the glossy brochures handed out by EA & Co. when looking for games, and basically look at the full market, not just a tiny corner of it.

[Ducks on Fire]

The "golden era" of gaming is an entirely subjective concept that is going to most likely be whatever was the childhood/teen years of the person making the claim. I don't know what period OP is even talking abouts 80s, 90s, 2000s? And why do people have such an obsession with EA anyways? Yeah, a lot of their games nowadays suck. Just stop buying bad games. Problem solved right?

[cinedine]

I don't understand the premise. I still buy Electronic Arts games. Despite what some people hate-training they still make good games. They do nothing other publishers don't do worse. Lootboxes, server closures for annual releases, microtransactions, ... they are far from the worst nor the only doing that stuff.

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Allow me to paraphrase then. ET was a huge part of the videogame crash of the 80s, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ games as well as ♥♥♥♥♥♥ marketing & ♥♥♥♥♥♥ videogame companies aren't an invention of the last couple years.

Not really.
First off: it was the (North) American crash. It was caused by low quality games, customers losing trsut in the companies and thus not buying as much, leaving many copies on shelves and thus leading to publishers having to buy back their old games in order to sell the new games and thus losing money en masse. ET is just famous for Atari burying a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of copies they would never sell in the landscape. Neither was it the worst game, nor anything special in that era.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Ducks on Fire:

The "golden era" of gaming is an entirely subjective concept

Correct. For me it started in the late 80s and it's still going on.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

ET was an awful game, but not the solo reason for the console game crash, what crash is the flood of crap games, or recycle games with different names, Atari is major part of the game crash as they push so much crap, they didn't care for quality. Another part is lack of customers for said area at the time, what remain popular still for kids was the arcade. Things didn't start picking back up for home console until Nintendo came around to reliving that market. PC market was on flip flop but it was fine during it time.

Golden time is subject, but that depends when the person grew up during said time, as possible they never had the chance to experience period of time before then, as well there subject when certain genre peak for it Golden time, example JRPG peak in the 90s and carry until mid 2000s, then afterwards most became boring, and bland, there some good games, but again find most best during certain times, and if said person actual experience it.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Unfortunately I have to burst some people bubble here. The so called "golden era" of PC gaming is not at all subjective nor is it a factor of nostalgia. If nostalgia was concerned then I'd go with the 80's. Anybody with any kind of critical mind is going to agree that the 90's was doing pretty much what the 80's started but better in every aspect, so that's clearly not it.

The golden era was in the 90's for two critical reasons: devs were actually making games for the passion they had of making games and sharing said passion with others, not for the sole sake of making games (which usually end up being resumed as a job just to make money). The second reason was the hardware limitation of the machines of the time which greatly pushed those devs into dwelving into originality and profoundly complex gameplay mechanics as a mean to sway customers into buying their games rather than simply focusing on shinnies and graphics. In fact I totally believe that the golden age of PC gaming ended when the focus of games were set on 3D and graphics for the sake of having better graphics over having better games...

[Falsus Te Deum]

Gaming has not stopped being great since the the beginning of the 80´s. Has never had any problem finding great games to play/wanting to play. And i play a lot.

[KillahInstinct]

Originally posted by Falsus Te Deum:

Gaming has not stopped being great since the the beginning of the 80´s. Has never had any problem finding great games to play/wanting to play. And i play a lot.

To play devils advocate a bit, I was just playing Doom II on my Steam Deck (finishing it was long overdue) and I realized just how many great elements where already in that game. Hidden things, scares, puzzles etc. Not much but graphics has changed, at least for FPS. I would argue the same for football games.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Everyone has their own golden age of gaming.
That moment when you found a game that you like to play and remember.

Sometimes you find another. You will play that alike. But it will never replace the early ones.
Thats caused by the brain.

[Vueko]

Forgive my ignorance but has there been a universally accepted (or as close to as one can get) golden era for gaming? When I see people talk about a golden era for gaming it, it always seems to be the individuals childhood, the dates always change based on how old they are. Is there anything close to an actual objective golden era?

[Start_Running]

Your grandpa also remembers a time when the internet was a blazing 28.8kbps
Plenty of good EA games outv there if you are actually interested.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Lady of Cinder ♫ ⋆｡˚:

Forgive my ignorance but has there been a universally accepted (or as close to as one can get) golden era for gaming? When I see people talk about a golden era for gaming it, it always seems to be the individuals childhood, the dates always change based on how old they are. Is there anything close to an actual objective golden era?

It’s pretty much “whatever time I was growing up as a kid and was uncritical of how games worked”

Everyone wants to insist “their” time was the “golden age” and that everything was better through rose tinted glasses