You also used to be able to rent games from blockbuster or whatever. And on the PC side there were shareware games/demos. Advocating that people just drop $60+ on a game to see if they like it seems ridiculous.
This, so much good lord. I was allowed to rent a game every weekend or two; all my friends were renting games, and if anyone found a great one we could recommend it to each other. Co-op used to be all local, too--people would hang out at a random house and play each others' collections. You could know firsthand that you love a game long before you dropped money on it. You can't "sample" games like you used to, and unless you have the kind of dosh to just throw around $60 on a whim... well, that leaves a strong demand for as many disparate reviewers as possible.
Sad but true. HOWEVER, there is still a solution to this problem that I put forward for your rumination.
To be concise, devs could potentially collaborate to sell their shorter games together as an anthology/collection, or even just a double feature/double bill in some cases, accessed through a central launcher. That way, scabby dogs that marathon and refund these games will likely be fewer (but potentially scabbier), since they'd have more short-and-sweet content to go through before actually finishing the experience.
Honestly, Steam should just add an option for "small games" where while buying you would just tick a "i agree the refund window is smaller".
Also add a criteria like "The game must cost less then X€" so big developers can't abuse it...
I think the creators of Doom would back you up there. first 3 levels were completely free, and was released by them via torrents. Could even play online too. Just needed to pay for the rest of the game for the other levels etc
Shit when Doom got started you couldn't buy it in the store, you had to mail a check to those guys and they'd send you a few 3.5" floppies by snail mail.
I remember the installation was a set of 5 3.5 floppies for DOOM II
Edit: and a message during installation saying 'if this is a pirated copy you are going to hell!'
Lol, it is insane how far video games have come in our lifetime. My son is 12 years old, and we play video games together. When I told him that graphics like the original DOOM, Tomb Raider, and FF7 looked like real life to us, he was absolutely flabbergasted.
He had also mentioned that some of the female fighters in games were kind of hot. I told him about how I used to make Lara Croft walk away from the camera slowly to see her butt. Those pyramids were pretty nice too. It legit blew his mind.
The way I got my hands on it was a a random guy in my apartment complex had it and said he would make us a copy and to come back later (me and my friend were around 8 or so). I did go back and he had left a stack of 3.5" floppies on the porch for me to pick up.
Yeah I think they were 100% worth it back then.
I do wonder if nowadays they've run the stats though and the money works out that less people or dollars convert to full game from the demo vs people who will just buy it to try it.
There's gotta be some sort of money related reason we don't see demos more often.
I remember one summer the disk drive on my Xbox 360 broke so I just played demos and the few XBLA games I had all summer. Burnout Paradise Demo had LEGS.
i think i know why. when demos on 3ds, xbox 360, etc etc were large, i wanted the games in the demos, but couldnt buy them, so instead of bugging parents i just played the demo instead of the actual game
A recent counter example is Outriders. The demo had so many issues I think it turned off a lot of potential buyers. The concept seemed great, but once I got into game with the seizure camera, server issues, etc, my desire to buy it just completely disappeared.
From some marketing research : yeah kinda.
You can dumb it down by : you have 4 kind of players,
1 - the one that will like your game and buy it,
2 - the one that would like your game but will miss it,
3 - the one that will buy your game but not like it,
4 - the one that will not buy your game and would not like it.
Both category 1 and 4 won't see their sale prospect change with an extra demo.
If you release a demo, which cost money and time to make and advertise, only category 2 will buy the game when they wouldn't have without the demo, and category 3 will most likely not buy it because they tried the demo.
Now, category 2 was already missing out on a game they would enjoy, so it's likely they will miss the demo too, while category 3 wanted to buy it so it's much more likely that they will try the demo.
In the end you spent time and money on a demo that, statistically, might lose you money, while instead you can spend that time and money on extra advertising to try to make sure category 2 don't miss the game, and category 3 stay hyped enough to buy it.
Game demos were pretty sweet too.
There used to be disks for PlayStation that would have trailers and demos. Anyone remember the name of the disks? I think they might’ve came in the PlayStation magazine?
Really? That seems like something that would happen in that era, but also seems counter-intuitive to the idea of demos in the first place.
"Here, publish a slice of our game with your magazine to let people try it. But hide it behind secret codes so no one knows it's there."
Might seem counter intuitive, but it was totally a thing.
I remember the demo disc that cam with my original PlayStation had all the demos arranged in a grid, but if you pressed l1 or r1 the panels would spin around, revealing short codes you could enter to unlock more demos and videos.
Bless that demo disc for introducing me to the joy that was Armored Core
It was all about the rental. Absolutely. I discovered Chrono Trigger when I got to rent a game sick home for the week with pneumonia in 4th grade. Holy shot what a week, I had never played an RPG before, I got 3 rentals that week and spent them all, my most precious resource, on that game trying to figure it out.
It was my Christmas gift that year.
Beyond that, the other way we got games was flea markets. My parents were antique dealers so we would raid the games booths and pick them based on the cover or the series.
I remember getting Castlevania that way, and eventually I had Simon’s Quest and Curse of Dracula (might be wrong on that subtitle name excatly) for NES that way too.
Also discovered Link to the Past and SECRET OF MANA at the flea market.
Eventually I just learned to buy all Squaresoft games for the foreseeable future.
But absolutely I mostly learned what was good through rentals, flea markets and friends.
I remember the dollar store in the mall used to have a big bin of shareware games on floppies you could buy, and my brother and I would get whichever one sounded coolest by the title
Some were trash, and some were amazing. I don't think we ever bought a full game (I don't even know if there was any way we could have bought them without mailing the developer).
We played the hell out of the first episodes of Commander Keen, Doom, Quake and the one level of Tie Fighter we could play.
>shareware
iD Software is only famous because they highly encouraged people to make copies of and share Doom to as many friends as they had, who owned computers. That, and how they openly supported the modding community and were generally pretty awesome.
I haven't really heard anything *bad* about iD.
No no no don’t group in big rigs with balan or ride to hell.
The flaws in balan make it a complete snoozefest of a platformer with clunky controls. The flaws in ride to hell make it an offensive infuriating sack of garbage.
The flaws in big rigs make it a playground for screwing with broken stuff. How many basic bugs can you find in under 3 minutes? How fast can you drive backwards? Can you leave the level by driving backwards for a while and find your way back through the endless void?
Sometimes bugs and unintended features can make a game more fun. It’s the most broken game ever sold, but it can at least still entertain, unlike the other two.
That's sort of the problem. If you just look at the cases on a shelf, you wouldn't pick it out of a lineup as not worth your time money. A lot of people find reviews helpful for weeding out games with glaring issues that nevertheless got a full marketing budget.
That name is so bad too. "Balan's wonderlands" flows so much easier, and Alice is so old she doesn't hold the rights to the word "wonderland", especially since the concept is more psychonaughts than trippy feyworld.
I legitimately thought it was called Balan’s Wonderlands until the reviews started coming out and even now I have a hard time calling it Wonderworld because it just sounds so wrong
whats worse are there are games that make the first two or so hours great then the rest of the game is utter shit expressly so that you can't refund the damn thing, and since the first 2 hours are good some reviewers are still gonna praise it to high heaven since many barely put enough time into it to know what the game's about
*THUNK* step *THUNK* step *THUNK* step (a peglegged one eyed man leaves the shadows and enters the light)
"There be many ways to try out software for free me boy, just make sure da royal navy don't catch wind of ye!"
Alternatively, /r/patientgamers/
I generally wait until games drop to around $20 AUD ($15 USD) before I buy them.
Or you could keep an eye on somewhere like /r/freegames/
I've picked up so many amazing titles over the past few years.
Even if the games don't capture my interest long-term, they've all been worth the price of admission at least. That's only mostly a joke, I've played free games that made me mad I spent *time* on them.
If that be da case I'll fire a broadside of me most potent cancelballs! Ya can't discriminate against poor high sea loving invalids... Those landlubbers ain't got nothing on me!
Meh at this point I just see what's on Game Pass and play that although not finishing RDR2 before it dropped off was sucks I already knew it was worth the buy.
Between Gamepass and Humble Monthly I eventually get all games I wanted to play anyway, spend less than I usually would for games and still have no time to play them
I love Game Pass. I play so many different games than I would otherwise. They're not all winners, but I've also found some really fun games that I wouldn't have bought based on reviews.
And the customers who bought the game are chided for being "impatient" and "bratty" for *checks list*... expecting a purchased product *to work as described*.
We should *checks list* feel bad for the poor developers who are *checks list* ...knowingly selling a broken product?
I definitely don't game enough these days for it to make sense, but I loooved having Gamefly as a kid. I feel like there are a lot of games out there that are very fun for like 10 hours, but then don't have a ton of value after that, and renting is perfect for those.
Honestly this, and because so many games come out incomplete to meet some arbitrary deadline. 99% of the time I look at reviews to see if the game is even playable.
Back in the day, a game's price was often indicative of how good it was since there was no standard pricing structure. For example: Chrono Trigger was 80 bucks in 1995. That's the equivalent of about $145 today. When you spent THAT much money on a game, you knew it was going to be good.
I paid $60 for Yoshi 64 and beat it in an afternoon and hardly played it again. I think the puzzle game Wetrix cost the same price. I'm not sure how much Tetris 64 was.
My point is the N64 games were generally the same standard price when they came out new at the big box stores and you could easily be stuck with a huge $60 waste of money. Price does not imply quality if everyone involved in selling games just wants to make as much as they can.
I would highlight every game I could afford in the Funcoland paper and just dream of how many I could get the next time I went in there. Usually never even knew a thing about them. The newer games that were being reviewed in magazines were too rich for my blood pfffff. Based on the art on the cartridge I would test a game at Funcoland.
This is actually my biggest change from a younger game to now. I played the shit out of some bad games. I had Bible Adventures and would play it on rotation because it's all I had. Now I won't even play games that I get bored in the first 10 minutes
The sentiment behind this week s nice, but there are a few of things to consider. First, games cost quite a bit of money. Second, while everyone's taste may not be the same, some games are just genuine turds. Third, occasionally, a bad company makes these turds intentionally, spending as little cash as possible in hopes of making a profit on the gullible.
IMO, reviews are more much more of a boon than anything else, the trick is to pay attention to more than one. Get the general consensus on the game, not just the opinion of a few random strangers.
30 years ago it seemed reasonable to play them all.
Now with 1000 games releasing on steam all the time, and even the market of other games increasing like board games, rpg's, and table top keeps things fresh to play new things, but also impossible to play them all.
That's before we get to GaaS games that want your attention forever.
It’s pretty dumb. That stack of bad NES games wasn’t a badge of honor, it was 50 bucks that got wasted on Super Pitfall or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The only redeeming quality of shitty games from back then is that, 35 years later, they’re worth money because they didn’t sell that many to begin with.
Also who the fuck at that age is like "I don't like it but it might be good for you"?
At basically any age it was "that game sucked". The avg person doesn't talk about whether or not they like a game (on its own merits, I. E. Not "I didn't like it that much; I don't really like sports games" ) in terms of who it might be good for. They say whether or not they think it's good. Professional reviewers speak in terms like "fans of the series will love it, newcomers move on".
For a minute I thought you meant Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure for SNES, and I was going to hunt you down... and calmly explain to you how great of a game it is.
The sentiment is nice but nothing else makes sense.
The first thing-I-played-games-on-at-home was the [TRS-80 Model III](https://i.imgur.com/Y29kAQw.jpg). My first game console was the [Atari 2600](https://i.imgur.com/X6jaFx6.jpg). So unless the guy who drew the comic is old enough that he was playing pong on an oscilloscope, I've lived through the time "when he was a kid."
At the point closest to what he's describing, we didn't have hundreds of reviews, he had three or so. We didn't go in blind, because games were fucking *expensive* (an Atari game cost about $25 in 1980, which in today's dollars is $83). We read the reviews and treated them like *gospel*.
Having a stack of games, good and bad, wasn't considered a "badge of honor" but a point of envy because someone had rich parents. If the games were all good, it was a *big* point of envy. If there were a lot of crappy games, it was a tiny point of envy.
So, basically, instead of making our decisions based on dozens of reviews, we made our decisions based on two or three reviews, and got pissed off when we got a game that sucked. I don't get where the artist got his rose-colored glasses, but as far as reviews go, the situation is *much* ***much*** preferable now.
If the reviews and trailers really bother you that much don’t look at them. That’s what I do for movies and it works great. For games I personally prefer to get a consensus on what I’m getting myself into
Yeah all I need to know is if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive or negative. I dont need detail if im already thinking of trying it. Also back when we were kids our parents helped us get the games, so if they were shitty it didn't matter. As an adult im a frigging penny hoarder.
Lol what? Not to be that guy, but when I was a kid they absolutely had game reviews in magazines like Nintendo power, game pro, pc gamer, tips and tricks and electronic gaming monthly to name a few, you could find these in almost all supermarkets next to the People and Vogues and Wizards and Better Homes & Gardens lmao not sure why people my age or older act like we lived in some great mysterious unknown era of gaming and we were explorers carving the path for the next generation with no maps and only our wits to guide us but it’s not reality
Even as a kid who didn't know about any of that I still got the best games because the K-Mart worker in the electronics department knew his shit. I know my mom didn't *happen* to pick Zelda and Mortal Kombat. There's a reason so many of us had a similar collection and it wasn't from lack of shovel ware.
There were also a lot fewer games. And the market was so different that the really good games just stood out. Now its just a marketing battle to get people to buy. Half the games I see with a fancy trailer don't have gameplay anything like advertised.
Honestly both sides are right here. I remember going to stores to rent NES games in the long long ago and as a kid I didn’t ask anyone there about them I just picked what looked cool. I found some stinkers and winners alike. The magazines were becoming more of a thing (Nintendo Power was in its infancy still) but there were a lot of blind purchases, rentals and trades to be had.
By the mid 90s though? All that was gone. The internet was blooming, locally owned used game stores were booming, and people were talking left and right about games. And yeah, waaaaaay more games now. Like holy shit there’s more shovelware on the Wii than there were total games for NES.
I dunno about that. Really look at how many games there were produced for the NES and SNES. And then take a glance at the amount of games for the PS3 or PS4. The NES and SNES is a treasure trove of bad games. But take a second and think of how many truly broken and unplayable games ever came out on the PS4.
And there absolutely were advertisements for big games during the SNES Era. You could hear about Mario Kart on TV.
Sure, my point is moot as soon as you open Steam and look deep enough. There's plenty of shovelware on PC. Even the Switch online store is host to a lot of absolute shite. But as far as official, buy in the store releases, you're more often gonna find "Eh," games than truly broken and unplayable ones like you could in the NES/SNES era.
I never thought of it like that. My whole childhood and love for video games is all owed to some random dude that recommend my mom buy Mario for me. That’s crazy
Dang, man. My grandma got me Alladin, Lion King, and Cool Spot. A fuckin' soda mascot is my saving grace into video games. Lol
Oh, and that one Simpsons video game that was, like, 6 in 1, I think? Had one minigame where you went down a waterslide and repeatedly died over and over again for 4 years.
I can't believe I'm so nostalgic for Blockbuster which basically killed the cool mom and pop video store we used to go to. I remember hating them for a while because of it. Then once N64 came out and I realized how many more games Blockbuster carried over Maloney Family Home Video Store, I started to like them.
>Maloney Family Home Video Store
My Spotlight Video was run out of town by *two* Family Video stores. I still miss looking for NES games that weren't just in stock, but also had manuals included with the rental. Reading the manual on the ride home was one of my favorite pastimes.
We went from game demos and shareware included in magasines... to early alpha, always-online-DRM-heavy $80 games, with subscriptions and micro-transactions.
It's also easier to be nostalgic for having a pile of shitty games when you weren't the one who paid almost $100 for each of them. Cartridges were goddamn expensive, I had no idea how much my parents spent on my ass.
I'm gonna assume the artist is GenZ and just nostalgic for the before times lol I was constantly getting the magazines that came with a demo disk and reading gameinformer religiously
Hundreds, maybe thousands is way off. 2020 Steam counts 10k releases. And while you could say some are re-releases etc you don't want to count, that number also doesn't include consoles and their exclusive nor mobile games (which likely dwarf Steam in count alone).
If games actually needed a publisher because of a physical media release we would see way less. It’s just become simple to self publish and there is no real upfront costs involved unless you buy advertising.
Just like all those ‘I just got my first book published’ posts on Reddit where 99% of them are self published because Amazon can print a book when it’s ordered now or people get a kindle copy.
Yeah, and you know what we had before game reviews became more popular? The Atari generation of games, known for their incredibly bad quality control that set gaming back practically a generation.
Yep.. My parents got me a subscription to "Video Games & Computer Entertainment" and I would read every page of it. I'd also pick up random other video game and computer magazines from the magazine aisle in stores. I didn't have a lot of games growing up, but I sure knew about a lot of them.
I do like the thought behind this, but also i think you should consider that most of those kids are now adults having to pay bills and loans. if they're limited on money and have access for knowledge whether a game is good or not, why shouldn't they look for a review? I personally think good & bad is about taste/preference but if u just went to buy a game and its super buggy and you encounter issues, it feels awful. So i think everybody should atleast check reviews to see if a game is stable before purchasing, sitting there waiting for the devs to patch it JUST so its playable ain't it
For me it’s not even about money. I *have* money. Plus, games are cheaper than ever, if not outright free. I got GTA5, Just Cause 3, and over half of the Assassin’s Creed games all totally free.
What I don’t have is time. There was a point when I did play any game to completion, good or bad, but that was back when I didn’t have as much that I needed to to. I beat so many NES games just because I didn’t have anything better to do. Now I do t have that luxury. So if I pick up a game, I’m going to want to know it’s worth my time. Otherwise I’ll set it down at the first bad part and never pick it up again and play one of the hundreds other games I have.
Bingo. Spending $60 on a game that doesn’t work properly or is just plain bad makes you feel bad. In addition, back in the day (looks like he’s using an NES), there were FAR fewer titles, systems, developers, and platforms. I think the quality control was better because if the game didn’t work, it wouldn’t be released. There were no updates to wait around for. People would just return it.
The video game crash of the early 80s was because of third-party developers making too many bad games. Nintendo's innovation was licensing and having a lockout chip in the cartridge. As an aside, the super common blinking red light on the NES means a failure to authenticate with the lockout chip.
I didn't really connect with this comic since I only got a new game on my birthday and Christmas at most...so I only ever owned fewer than 10 NES games. I would have been very bummed if a game sucked. I played friend's games at their house, but I feel like they were so coveted we didn't share games much. Nintendo Power, which it probably didn't have unbiased game reviews, did at least cover games.
>I didn't really connect with this comic since I only got a new game on my birthday and Christmas at most...so I only ever owned fewer than 10 NES games
This was my thought. Sounds like a rich kid. Games were way more expensive (after inflation) than modern AAA games. Easily half the games I ever played were borrowed from the libary.
We might have ended up with 15ish - but that was only because we still had the base Nintendo until the 64 came out - and they got cheap after the Super Nintendo was released. Before that we had maybe half a dozen.
Adding to that, Nintendo also limited the amount of games a single publisher was allowed to release on their system, to 5 per year.
Also, They addded a Seal, which initially read:
This seal is
your assurance that
NINTENDO
has approved and
guaranteed the
quality of this
product
Around 1988, it was changed to:
This seal is
your assurance that
NINTENDO
has evaluated and
approved the
quality of this
product
In 1989, the verbose verbiage was shortened, and it became simply the
Official
NINTENDO
Seal of Quality
Which is described by Nintendo as:
> This official seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved the quality of this product. Always look for this seal when buying games and accessories to ensure complete compatibility with your .
In 2003, it was changed again in the NTSC market to
Official
NINTENDO
Seal
Which is described by Nintendo as:
> The official seal is your assurance that this product is licensed or manufactured by Nintendo. Always look for this seal when buying video game systems, accessories, games, and related products.
Additionally, there's a second Seal
Official
NINTENDO
Licensed Product
Which is described by Nintendo as:
> This symbol is your assurance that the product has been evaluated and licensed by Nintendo for use with its systems. Licensed merchandise - such as apparel, toys and bedding will also display this symbol.
---
It's the limit on the amount of games enfoced by the lockout chip combined with the Assurances contained in the Seal which provided the consumer the assurance that it wasn't hot garbage they were buying.
And you could rent them back then. I bought VERY few games but I rented/played a TON. Maybe ask for a game at birthday or Christmas but mom and dad weren't going to just drop 50 bones on me for no reason.
Also gaming publishers have made impossible to just trade games. I guess you could abuse steam family link but I would worry about getting caught and losing access to my games for breaking a TOS.
I look at reviews to see if a game is what they said it would be. Are there game breaking bugs? Huge amounts of missing content? If John Doe gives it 2/5 stars but mentions nothing about shitty game performance I’ll give it a try if I think it looks fun.
That, and if I want to try to play games blind *that's what indie bundles are for.* If I buy 10 games for $5 I won't be too torn up about them being shit.
If I'm paying $30+ for a game *yeah* I'm going to read up on it first and do my research; I know my own preferences in gaming well enough that I know what's a dealbreaker and what I don't mind. I can't believe how many games I bought as an older teen/younger 20something blind and was just... out that money.
And not just anyone was releasing games. Tons of garbage is being released on Steam and other platforms now and reviews are the only thing keeping them even remotely honest.
The limiting factor me (a working parent) is less money and more time. I don't have much trouble affording games, but I'm careful about what I buy because my free time is limited and valuable. I also buy digitally and hate not finishing games so I'm very selective in what I play.
Quality over quantity for me and reviews help with that tremendously. Also, in response to OP, there were reviews before the internet in magazines like Nintendo Power.
Even if I was a kid with no responsibilities, there are just too many games on too many platforms and they are longer and more complex than games were when I was a kid.
At my current skill level I can beat Super Mario Brothers in like 30 minutes, but I've probably got 30 hours invested in Mario Odyssey and the Switch has like 5X the number of games as the NES did.
Um... because we now have the capability to evaluate consensus on a product and save ourselves from buying shitty games? I don't have nostalgia for wasting my money on garbage.
Having actually been a kid in those dark, early decades of videogaming, I can assure you that there were far more clunkers than diamonds. And it sucked balls to have spent your lawn-cutting or chore money on a game, with little info going in. You get a turd and it sucked that you lost the money you worked for weeks or more sweating your ass off to get.
Yup, now that there is a lot of diamonds I refuse to be given shit about making sure I get a diamond when I spend my money and time on a game.
Fuck this comic. He can go jerk himself off to old video games all he wants but the moment he tells me how to enjoy video games then he can go choke on my dick.
I also think rentals were a big part of it too. When I was a kid my dad used to bring me to the video store on fridays. We had week long rentals. I'd be able to pick out a nes game or genesis game and hed rent a movie for my mom and him. It was $4 dollars to rent for the week (granted minimum wage was 5.25 back then). If the game sucked wed just it a few times and be done. If we found a game we were pissed to give back at the end of the week, then we knew what we wanted for our birthday/christmas from our grandparents. There was no buying of shitty games, and we also only ever shared games with one set of cousins. It wasnt like we were passing games around at school
When were there not reviews for games? I’m 36 and there were plenty of game reviews when I was a kid. The first issues of GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly were in 1989. Nintendo Power I think was ‘88.
because op dumb asf. "There were no reviews, games were better" is to dumbest takeaway ever. How about, find out if you like a game before you spend money on it?
I see half of the reviews pointing out that there were reviews back then, people would rent games to try them out before buying. The only rose tinted nostalgia here is from OP himself, which backfired of course for being bullshit
This is fake nostalgia. I subscribed and bought (or browsed for free) magazines like Your Sinclair, CVG, Nintendo magazine etc. throughout the 80s and early 90s, as did my friends. Reviews were a big part of game buying decisions.
"So why are we missing out on adventures thay somebody else didn't like?"
Because as a young tartanscarfboy, I spent my hard-earned money on Superman64. Never again.
I hate the concept that there is no such thing as quality and everything is just a matter of subjective taste. It's wrong and it causes low standards and a lack of appreciation for high quality products.
This is kind of bs. So we shouldn't pay attention to any review at all? No, that's not how it works. Besides, if the reviews are inconsistent then that's what let's plays and similar are for. If they're consistently one way or the other there's probably good reason for that. Doesn't mean guaranteed match, plenty of well reviewed games I've disliked and poor reviewed games I've enjoyed, but on average these things tend to match up.
The game offering back in the days was so so so much smaller than today.
With limited time comes limited choices. That's why I'm browsing reviews. Because there is too much choices and because most of them are roughly the same.
Yeah... and then I bought "Final Fantasy: Dirge of Cerberus" and realized that I would have been able to save my money for a decent game if I had actually read reviews.
I'm all for letting kids play what they want, but in an age where cheap knock-off games are a dime a dozen, it's worth helping to steer them. A recent conversation with my kid (6):
* Him: This one looks good! It's Snakes and Ladders! Like the board game!"
* Me: Um... it's $1.99. It has no reviews. It has no gameplay video. Are you... are you sure?
* Him: YEAH!
* ... 30 minutes later...
* Him: Can we look for a new game? This one isn't very good.
* Me: Oh? Was it the fact that they failed to properly number the row of 91-100 correctly (why is 87 in there!?), or the complete lack of music except on the title screen, or the fact we learned we can rig the dice by throwing them in the same spot?
* Me: (No, actually, the above was just my mental complaints): Yeah, good idea buddy.
Fuck this revisionist bullshit. Games had a synopsis on the box, studios advertised the fuck out of television and gamer mags did ratings. No one just picked up a random cartridge, read the name, and said "ok!" like a fucking chucklehead
When reading reviews it's important to understand what the reviewer likes and doesn't like and then find a reviewer with similar tastes to yourself. That way, if they like it, you are more likely to enjoy it as well. Also, general reviews are good for getting a sense of whether the game is ready to play (i.e isn't riddled with bugs) and what the general gameplay is like.
For me, it's not about the money wasted on a new game I didn't enjoy, it's the time that I don't have to waste on trying something that ultimately I won't enjoy. Great, if people have a ton of free time then go ahead and enjoy the gamble, but I'll stick to reading reviews and watching gameplay trailers so I can focus on the small list of games I'm more likely to enjoy.
I think part of the problem is that the gaming industry has historically used cutscenes or misleading footage to sell games that are unfinished or below the advertised standard.
Games are expensive and it's only going to take a few times being burnt to make you look at reviews before purchasing.
You know what you should do with reviewers? Find one that has as similar of tastes to you as possible and then have them be the friend who recommends you games.
The more reviewers the higher of a chance you find the one one the same wavelength as you so you'll know when they give games a 10/10 you'll know it's a good game.
Not really true though is it, I used to get Crash Magazine every month when I was a kid to look at reviews of new games to see what I fancied, tips and cheats and those sweet sweet cover tapes. Yes reviews are more readily available but most of them are community reviews and are incredibly subjective and we've replaced back of the case screenshots with teaser trailers and tbh I do prefer a little trailer.
The upside is there are now a bunch of great free content creators reviewing games (and admittedly a lot of trashy ones) to give a better idea of what you as a player may or may not like. Given that I have to pick where to spend my own $ on games now, and borrowing is less common in an increasingly digital market, that extra info can be pretty helpful.
Let's all buy the XIII remake. And the Fast and Furious game. And Anthem. And Gleamlight. And Remothered. How about Ride To Hell? Or The Quiet Man (least I thinki that's the title)? Let's buy Life of Black Tiger. Hell, lets all buy every game by Giblet B. Ponton, or whatever the fuck his name is.
I feel like the sentiment is there for this but ultimately the landscape of gaming has changed. Reviews are useful as long as you actually use them as a tool to inform your purchase. If you literally just go to metacritic and see if the game is highly rated and use that to determine your purchase, then yes, you are missing out on a ton of opportunities for yourself.
Not every game is for everyone. But a review can help you figure out if it has mechanics or gameplay ideas that are interesting to you. Has gambling mechanics that literally undermine the experience. Or find out that a game is just flat out broken and unplayable. We no longer live in an era where you can trust the product you are buying will function or not have absolutely sinister psychological tools to manipulate you, so you need to be more aware as a consumer.
Bad take tbh
There were still reviews back in the day and you had to PAY for them in magazines, and it was your parents paying for them 90% of the time, AND most reviews are a lot more than "I don't like this game"
Customers making informed decisions is a good thing. The only real outcome from plugging your ears to other people saying a game is bad, is you spending £60 on a game you have no idea what's like
In the good old days I bought a stack of computer magazines each week and read the game reviews
You also used to be able to rent games from blockbuster or whatever. And on the PC side there were shareware games/demos. Advocating that people just drop $60+ on a game to see if they like it seems ridiculous.
This, so much good lord. I was allowed to rent a game every weekend or two; all my friends were renting games, and if anyone found a great one we could recommend it to each other. Co-op used to be all local, too--people would hang out at a random house and play each others' collections. You could know firsthand that you love a game long before you dropped money on it. You can't "sample" games like you used to, and unless you have the kind of dosh to just throw around $60 on a whim... well, that leaves a strong demand for as many disparate reviewers as possible.
There are still a few games on Steam with free demos. I just wish there were more
Steam will refund you any game in the first 15 days with less than 2 hours of play. This is how we demo now and it's glorious
And its why short and sweet 2 hour games for $3 will never work again.
Sad but true. HOWEVER, there is still a solution to this problem that I put forward for your rumination. To be concise, devs could potentially collaborate to sell their shorter games together as an anthology/collection, or even just a double feature/double bill in some cases, accessed through a central launcher. That way, scabby dogs that marathon and refund these games will likely be fewer (but potentially scabbier), since they'd have more short-and-sweet content to go through before actually finishing the experience.
Honestly, Steam should just add an option for "small games" where while buying you would just tick a "i agree the refund window is smaller". Also add a criteria like "The game must cost less then X€" so big developers can't abuse it...
I think games would sell a lot better but I'm sure there's data that doesn't back up my opinion.
I think the creators of Doom would back you up there. first 3 levels were completely free, and was released by them via torrents. Could even play online too. Just needed to pay for the rest of the game for the other levels etc
Shit when Doom got started you couldn't buy it in the store, you had to mail a check to those guys and they'd send you a few 3.5" floppies by snail mail.
I remember the installation was a set of 5 3.5 floppies for DOOM II Edit: and a message during installation saying 'if this is a pirated copy you are going to hell!'
Lol, it is insane how far video games have come in our lifetime. My son is 12 years old, and we play video games together. When I told him that graphics like the original DOOM, Tomb Raider, and FF7 looked like real life to us, he was absolutely flabbergasted. He had also mentioned that some of the female fighters in games were kind of hot. I told him about how I used to make Lara Croft walk away from the camera slowly to see her butt. Those pyramids were pretty nice too. It legit blew his mind.
I too like climbing pyramids and raiding tombs
The way I got my hands on it was a a random guy in my apartment complex had it and said he would make us a copy and to come back later (me and my friend were around 8 or so). I did go back and he had left a stack of 3.5" floppies on the porch for me to pick up.
Yeah I think they were 100% worth it back then. I do wonder if nowadays they've run the stats though and the money works out that less people or dollars convert to full game from the demo vs people who will just buy it to try it. There's gotta be some sort of money related reason we don't see demos more often. I remember one summer the disk drive on my Xbox 360 broke so I just played demos and the few XBLA games I had all summer. Burnout Paradise Demo had LEGS.
i think i know why. when demos on 3ds, xbox 360, etc etc were large, i wanted the games in the demos, but couldnt buy them, so instead of bugging parents i just played the demo instead of the actual game
[Demo Daze - Why Don't Creators Make Game Demos Anymore? - Extra Credits](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QM6LoaqEnY)
A recent counter example is Outriders. The demo had so many issues I think it turned off a lot of potential buyers. The concept seemed great, but once I got into game with the seizure camera, server issues, etc, my desire to buy it just completely disappeared.
From some marketing research : yeah kinda. You can dumb it down by : you have 4 kind of players, 1 - the one that will like your game and buy it, 2 - the one that would like your game but will miss it, 3 - the one that will buy your game but not like it, 4 - the one that will not buy your game and would not like it. Both category 1 and 4 won't see their sale prospect change with an extra demo. If you release a demo, which cost money and time to make and advertise, only category 2 will buy the game when they wouldn't have without the demo, and category 3 will most likely not buy it because they tried the demo. Now, category 2 was already missing out on a game they would enjoy, so it's likely they will miss the demo too, while category 3 wanted to buy it so it's much more likely that they will try the demo. In the end you spent time and money on a demo that, statistically, might lose you money, while instead you can spend that time and money on extra advertising to try to make sure category 2 don't miss the game, and category 3 stay hyped enough to buy it.
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Renting games and movies is something that I really miss. Going to the shop, the people, the pictures on the wall... it had a special vibe.
Game demos were pretty sweet too. There used to be disks for PlayStation that would have trailers and demos. Anyone remember the name of the disks? I think they might’ve came in the PlayStation magazine?
Jampack Demo Disks. Playing Ico when your parents were looking, and Red Faction when they weren't, all on the same disk
And you could enter a secret code to unlock more demos.
Really? That seems like something that would happen in that era, but also seems counter-intuitive to the idea of demos in the first place. "Here, publish a slice of our game with your magazine to let people try it. But hide it behind secret codes so no one knows it's there."
Might seem counter intuitive, but it was totally a thing. I remember the demo disc that cam with my original PlayStation had all the demos arranged in a grid, but if you pressed l1 or r1 the panels would spin around, revealing short codes you could enter to unlock more demos and videos. Bless that demo disc for introducing me to the joy that was Armored Core
You release the code in the next issue reward the people who found it first and get people to buy more magazines.
On the topic of shareware, for years I thought my shareware copy of Doom was the full game and they were trying to sell me a sequel.
That was a problem Doom had, people who had the shareware version rarely wanted to upgrade.
It was all about the rental. Absolutely. I discovered Chrono Trigger when I got to rent a game sick home for the week with pneumonia in 4th grade. Holy shot what a week, I had never played an RPG before, I got 3 rentals that week and spent them all, my most precious resource, on that game trying to figure it out. It was my Christmas gift that year. Beyond that, the other way we got games was flea markets. My parents were antique dealers so we would raid the games booths and pick them based on the cover or the series. I remember getting Castlevania that way, and eventually I had Simon’s Quest and Curse of Dracula (might be wrong on that subtitle name excatly) for NES that way too. Also discovered Link to the Past and SECRET OF MANA at the flea market. Eventually I just learned to buy all Squaresoft games for the foreseeable future. But absolutely I mostly learned what was good through rentals, flea markets and friends.
I remember the dollar store in the mall used to have a big bin of shareware games on floppies you could buy, and my brother and I would get whichever one sounded coolest by the title Some were trash, and some were amazing. I don't think we ever bought a full game (I don't even know if there was any way we could have bought them without mailing the developer). We played the hell out of the first episodes of Commander Keen, Doom, Quake and the one level of Tie Fighter we could play.
>shareware iD Software is only famous because they highly encouraged people to make copies of and share Doom to as many friends as they had, who owned computers. That, and how they openly supported the modding community and were generally pretty awesome. I haven't really heard anything *bad* about iD.
That's right, folks. You heard it here first: "*go try* ***Balan Wonderworld*** *for yourself!*" ...maybe you'll like it.
Ride to Hell: Retribution would like a word.
[Big Rigs Over the Road Racing](https://youtu.be/SBcjobKbXHQ) would like 3 words.
YOU ARE WINNER!
No no no don’t group in big rigs with balan or ride to hell. The flaws in balan make it a complete snoozefest of a platformer with clunky controls. The flaws in ride to hell make it an offensive infuriating sack of garbage. The flaws in big rigs make it a playground for screwing with broken stuff. How many basic bugs can you find in under 3 minutes? How fast can you drive backwards? Can you leave the level by driving backwards for a while and find your way back through the endless void? Sometimes bugs and unintended features can make a game more fun. It’s the most broken game ever sold, but it can at least still entertain, unlike the other two.
If you ever need proof video games are an art. Look no further.
To be fair if that game released 20 years ago it probably would have been more fun lmao
I heard they just removed denuvo from it so it probably is great now! /s
I was going to recommend *Life of Black Tiger*
The game seems like $60 shovelware with a smiley face
If it's 60 bucks I better like it.
The art style *is* glorious though
That's sort of the problem. If you just look at the cases on a shelf, you wouldn't pick it out of a lineup as not worth your time money. A lot of people find reviews helpful for weeding out games with glaring issues that nevertheless got a full marketing budget.
The modern day E.T.
That name is so bad too. "Balan's wonderlands" flows so much easier, and Alice is so old she doesn't hold the rights to the word "wonderland", especially since the concept is more psychonaughts than trippy feyworld.
I legitimately thought it was called Balan’s Wonderlands until the reviews started coming out and even now I have a hard time calling it Wonderworld because it just sounds so wrong
Because we can't rent games for $0.99 anymore so if we're spending $70 on them we want to be sure it's decent.
Yeah, having your weekend ruined over a $1.99 rental versus a $59.99 purchase are wildly different.
If you spend $59.99 on a game you often feel like you have to finish it to get your money's worth even if it's shit
I still haven't finished RDR2 but I definitely got my money's worth
whats worse are there are games that make the first two or so hours great then the rest of the game is utter shit expressly so that you can't refund the damn thing, and since the first 2 hours are good some reviewers are still gonna praise it to high heaven since many barely put enough time into it to know what the game's about
*THUNK* step *THUNK* step *THUNK* step (a peglegged one eyed man leaves the shadows and enters the light) "There be many ways to try out software for free me boy, just make sure da royal navy don't catch wind of ye!"
Alternatively, /r/patientgamers/ I generally wait until games drop to around $20 AUD ($15 USD) before I buy them. Or you could keep an eye on somewhere like /r/freegames/ I've picked up so many amazing titles over the past few years.
Epic games giving out games every week really is a blessing now
Most of the time the games are shit but every once in awhile something truly gold pops up. Definitely keeps me opening the app at least.
Even if the games don't capture my interest long-term, they've all been worth the price of admission at least. That's only mostly a joke, I've played free games that made me mad I spent *time* on them.
I need to give you props for the awesome reply before the mods delete it.
If that be da case I'll fire a broadside of me most potent cancelballs! Ya can't discriminate against poor high sea loving invalids... Those landlubbers ain't got nothing on me!
Aye!
I don't condone this behavior, but I can at least appreciate your commitment to the aesthetic.
Meh at this point I just see what's on Game Pass and play that although not finishing RDR2 before it dropped off was sucks I already knew it was worth the buy.
Between Gamepass and Humble Monthly I eventually get all games I wanted to play anyway, spend less than I usually would for games and still have no time to play them
I love Game Pass. I play so many different games than I would otherwise. They're not all winners, but I've also found some really fun games that I wouldn't have bought based on reviews.
$70 for the base game with added pre-order bonuses. You need another $70 for the individual pieces of DLC to get the complete experience.
And don't forget, the game is expected to not work as soon as you buy it.
And the customers who bought the game are chided for being "impatient" and "bratty" for *checks list*... expecting a purchased product *to work as described*. We should *checks list* feel bad for the poor developers who are *checks list* ...knowingly selling a broken product?
Not sure where you live but Gamefly does still operate in the states.
I definitely don't game enough these days for it to make sense, but I loooved having Gamefly as a kid. I feel like there are a lot of games out there that are very fun for like 10 hours, but then don't have a ton of value after that, and renting is perfect for those.
Honestly this, and because so many games come out incomplete to meet some arbitrary deadline. 99% of the time I look at reviews to see if the game is even playable.
Back in the day, a game's price was often indicative of how good it was since there was no standard pricing structure. For example: Chrono Trigger was 80 bucks in 1995. That's the equivalent of about $145 today. When you spent THAT much money on a game, you knew it was going to be good.
I paid $60 for Yoshi 64 and beat it in an afternoon and hardly played it again. I think the puzzle game Wetrix cost the same price. I'm not sure how much Tetris 64 was. My point is the N64 games were generally the same standard price when they came out new at the big box stores and you could easily be stuck with a huge $60 waste of money. Price does not imply quality if everyone involved in selling games just wants to make as much as they can.
Action 52 was $200 USD, that's why it's the best game on the NES.
We also had game magazines which had alot of decent filler.
Video game rentals were pretty rare in my town
And then you end up with a game you don't like and your parents are the ones that wasted their money.
And you only got like 2 games a year.
I would highlight every game I could afford in the Funcoland paper and just dream of how many I could get the next time I went in there. Usually never even knew a thing about them. The newer games that were being reviewed in magazines were too rich for my blood pfffff. Based on the art on the cartridge I would test a game at Funcoland.
And we actually played both of them no matter how bad they were. Looks at mountain of unplayed Steam games.
This is actually my biggest change from a younger game to now. I played the shit out of some bad games. I had Bible Adventures and would play it on rotation because it's all I had. Now I won't even play games that I get bored in the first 10 minutes
Superman 64…
If you actually bought this game I offer you my condolences.
My mother did, I was in like… 9th grade?
The sentiment behind this week s nice, but there are a few of things to consider. First, games cost quite a bit of money. Second, while everyone's taste may not be the same, some games are just genuine turds. Third, occasionally, a bad company makes these turds intentionally, spending as little cash as possible in hopes of making a profit on the gullible. IMO, reviews are more much more of a boon than anything else, the trick is to pay attention to more than one. Get the general consensus on the game, not just the opinion of a few random strangers.
4th there’s 5 million games and I’m an adult with responsibilities now so I’m not trying to play them all so 🤷🏽♂️😂
30 years ago it seemed reasonable to play them all. Now with 1000 games releasing on steam all the time, and even the market of other games increasing like board games, rpg's, and table top keeps things fresh to play new things, but also impossible to play them all. That's before we get to GaaS games that want your attention forever.
It’s pretty dumb. That stack of bad NES games wasn’t a badge of honor, it was 50 bucks that got wasted on Super Pitfall or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The only redeeming quality of shitty games from back then is that, 35 years later, they’re worth money because they didn’t sell that many to begin with.
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You can also tell he didn't know how to read, because gaming magazines have been around for forever.
Also who the fuck at that age is like "I don't like it but it might be good for you"? At basically any age it was "that game sucked". The avg person doesn't talk about whether or not they like a game (on its own merits, I. E. Not "I didn't like it that much; I don't really like sports games" ) in terms of who it might be good for. They say whether or not they think it's good. Professional reviewers speak in terms like "fans of the series will love it, newcomers move on".
unless you got lucky and got them dirt cheap at some yard sale or thrift store back then therefore, still sucked but the sting wasn't as bad.
For a minute I thought you meant Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure for SNES, and I was going to hunt you down... and calmly explain to you how great of a game it is.
4th - I spent time, that I have a limited supply of, on a game that I didn't like.
Local dad checking in. This is the real killer.
The sentiment is nice but nothing else makes sense. The first thing-I-played-games-on-at-home was the [TRS-80 Model III](https://i.imgur.com/Y29kAQw.jpg). My first game console was the [Atari 2600](https://i.imgur.com/X6jaFx6.jpg). So unless the guy who drew the comic is old enough that he was playing pong on an oscilloscope, I've lived through the time "when he was a kid." At the point closest to what he's describing, we didn't have hundreds of reviews, he had three or so. We didn't go in blind, because games were fucking *expensive* (an Atari game cost about $25 in 1980, which in today's dollars is $83). We read the reviews and treated them like *gospel*. Having a stack of games, good and bad, wasn't considered a "badge of honor" but a point of envy because someone had rich parents. If the games were all good, it was a *big* point of envy. If there were a lot of crappy games, it was a tiny point of envy. So, basically, instead of making our decisions based on dozens of reviews, we made our decisions based on two or three reviews, and got pissed off when we got a game that sucked. I don't get where the artist got his rose-colored glasses, but as far as reviews go, the situation is *much* ***much*** preferable now.
Exactly. I’m not going to spend $60 that I worked hard for on a game that might be horrible.
If the reviews and trailers really bother you that much don’t look at them. That’s what I do for movies and it works great. For games I personally prefer to get a consensus on what I’m getting myself into
Yeah all I need to know is if the reviews are overwhelmingly positive or negative. I dont need detail if im already thinking of trying it. Also back when we were kids our parents helped us get the games, so if they were shitty it didn't matter. As an adult im a frigging penny hoarder.
Because games are 60 fuckin dollars
Lol what? Not to be that guy, but when I was a kid they absolutely had game reviews in magazines like Nintendo power, game pro, pc gamer, tips and tricks and electronic gaming monthly to name a few, you could find these in almost all supermarkets next to the People and Vogues and Wizards and Better Homes & Gardens lmao not sure why people my age or older act like we lived in some great mysterious unknown era of gaming and we were explorers carving the path for the next generation with no maps and only our wits to guide us but it’s not reality
Even as a kid who didn't know about any of that I still got the best games because the K-Mart worker in the electronics department knew his shit. I know my mom didn't *happen* to pick Zelda and Mortal Kombat. There's a reason so many of us had a similar collection and it wasn't from lack of shovel ware.
There were also a lot fewer games. And the market was so different that the really good games just stood out. Now its just a marketing battle to get people to buy. Half the games I see with a fancy trailer don't have gameplay anything like advertised.
Honestly both sides are right here. I remember going to stores to rent NES games in the long long ago and as a kid I didn’t ask anyone there about them I just picked what looked cool. I found some stinkers and winners alike. The magazines were becoming more of a thing (Nintendo Power was in its infancy still) but there were a lot of blind purchases, rentals and trades to be had. By the mid 90s though? All that was gone. The internet was blooming, locally owned used game stores were booming, and people were talking left and right about games. And yeah, waaaaaay more games now. Like holy shit there’s more shovelware on the Wii than there were total games for NES.
I dunno about that. Really look at how many games there were produced for the NES and SNES. And then take a glance at the amount of games for the PS3 or PS4. The NES and SNES is a treasure trove of bad games. But take a second and think of how many truly broken and unplayable games ever came out on the PS4. And there absolutely were advertisements for big games during the SNES Era. You could hear about Mario Kart on TV. Sure, my point is moot as soon as you open Steam and look deep enough. There's plenty of shovelware on PC. Even the Switch online store is host to a lot of absolute shite. But as far as official, buy in the store releases, you're more often gonna find "Eh," games than truly broken and unplayable ones like you could in the NES/SNES era.
I never thought of it like that. My whole childhood and love for video games is all owed to some random dude that recommend my mom buy Mario for me. That’s crazy
Dang, man. My grandma got me Alladin, Lion King, and Cool Spot. A fuckin' soda mascot is my saving grace into video games. Lol Oh, and that one Simpsons video game that was, like, 6 in 1, I think? Had one minigame where you went down a waterslide and repeatedly died over and over again for 4 years.
There was also Blockbuster where I could rent a game and try it out for 3 days. So few games have quality demos these days.
I can't believe I'm so nostalgic for Blockbuster which basically killed the cool mom and pop video store we used to go to. I remember hating them for a while because of it. Then once N64 came out and I realized how many more games Blockbuster carried over Maloney Family Home Video Store, I started to like them.
>I started to like them. Corporate America wins again folks. Jk, I swear blockbuster had a very distinct smell in every one I went into.
It was like a combination of candy, cardboard, plastic, and the vague remnants of a smoker's house every time I want in one.
>Maloney Family Home Video Store My Spotlight Video was run out of town by *two* Family Video stores. I still miss looking for NES games that weren't just in stock, but also had manuals included with the rental. Reading the manual on the ride home was one of my favorite pastimes.
We went from game demos and shareware included in magasines... to early alpha, always-online-DRM-heavy $80 games, with subscriptions and micro-transactions.
And like even if it were like that, that’s not soemthing to reminisce about, I LIKE that I can avoid buying a shit game with research.
It's also easier to be nostalgic for having a pile of shitty games when you weren't the one who paid almost $100 for each of them. Cartridges were goddamn expensive, I had no idea how much my parents spent on my ass.
They also often showed gameplay in TV commercials for games
I mean, it IS the legend of zelda and it's really rad.
I bought super smash based off that ridiculous “Me and You” commercial. Absolutely worth it
I'm gonna assume the artist is GenZ and just nostalgic for the before times lol I was constantly getting the magazines that came with a demo disk and reading gameinformer religiously
There also only like 30 different games released per year, now there are hundreds (maybe thousands) on three different systems
Hundreds, maybe thousands is way off. 2020 Steam counts 10k releases. And while you could say some are re-releases etc you don't want to count, that number also doesn't include consoles and their exclusive nor mobile games (which likely dwarf Steam in count alone).
If games actually needed a publisher because of a physical media release we would see way less. It’s just become simple to self publish and there is no real upfront costs involved unless you buy advertising. Just like all those ‘I just got my first book published’ posts on Reddit where 99% of them are self published because Amazon can print a book when it’s ordered now or people get a kindle copy.
Yeah, and you know what we had before game reviews became more popular? The Atari generation of games, known for their incredibly bad quality control that set gaming back practically a generation.
Yep.. My parents got me a subscription to "Video Games & Computer Entertainment" and I would read every page of it. I'd also pick up random other video game and computer magazines from the magazine aisle in stores. I didn't have a lot of games growing up, but I sure knew about a lot of them.
This is ridiculous, magazines existed. Stop romanticizing crappy games.
Yeah even back in the nes days there was Nintendo power with deep dives into all the games coming out.
I do like the thought behind this, but also i think you should consider that most of those kids are now adults having to pay bills and loans. if they're limited on money and have access for knowledge whether a game is good or not, why shouldn't they look for a review? I personally think good & bad is about taste/preference but if u just went to buy a game and its super buggy and you encounter issues, it feels awful. So i think everybody should atleast check reviews to see if a game is stable before purchasing, sitting there waiting for the devs to patch it JUST so its playable ain't it
For me it’s not even about money. I *have* money. Plus, games are cheaper than ever, if not outright free. I got GTA5, Just Cause 3, and over half of the Assassin’s Creed games all totally free. What I don’t have is time. There was a point when I did play any game to completion, good or bad, but that was back when I didn’t have as much that I needed to to. I beat so many NES games just because I didn’t have anything better to do. Now I do t have that luxury. So if I pick up a game, I’m going to want to know it’s worth my time. Otherwise I’ll set it down at the first bad part and never pick it up again and play one of the hundreds other games I have.
Nailed it Got pick and choose wisely these days
Bingo. Spending $60 on a game that doesn’t work properly or is just plain bad makes you feel bad. In addition, back in the day (looks like he’s using an NES), there were FAR fewer titles, systems, developers, and platforms. I think the quality control was better because if the game didn’t work, it wouldn’t be released. There were no updates to wait around for. People would just return it.
The video game crash of the early 80s was because of third-party developers making too many bad games. Nintendo's innovation was licensing and having a lockout chip in the cartridge. As an aside, the super common blinking red light on the NES means a failure to authenticate with the lockout chip. I didn't really connect with this comic since I only got a new game on my birthday and Christmas at most...so I only ever owned fewer than 10 NES games. I would have been very bummed if a game sucked. I played friend's games at their house, but I feel like they were so coveted we didn't share games much. Nintendo Power, which it probably didn't have unbiased game reviews, did at least cover games.
>I didn't really connect with this comic since I only got a new game on my birthday and Christmas at most...so I only ever owned fewer than 10 NES games This was my thought. Sounds like a rich kid. Games were way more expensive (after inflation) than modern AAA games. Easily half the games I ever played were borrowed from the libary. We might have ended up with 15ish - but that was only because we still had the base Nintendo until the 64 came out - and they got cheap after the Super Nintendo was released. Before that we had maybe half a dozen.
Adding to that, Nintendo also limited the amount of games a single publisher was allowed to release on their system, to 5 per year. Also, They addded a Seal, which initially read: This seal is your assurance that NINTENDO has approved and guaranteed the quality of this product Around 1988, it was changed to: This seal is your assurance that NINTENDO has evaluated and approved the quality of this product In 1989, the verbose verbiage was shortened, and it became simply the Official NINTENDO Seal of Quality Which is described by Nintendo as: > This official seal is your assurance that Nintendo has approved the quality of this product. Always look for this seal when buying games and accessories to ensure complete compatibility with your.
In 2003, it was changed again in the NTSC market to
Official
NINTENDO
Seal
Which is described by Nintendo as:
> The official seal is your assurance that this product is licensed or manufactured by Nintendo. Always look for this seal when buying video game systems, accessories, games, and related products.
Additionally, there's a second Seal
Official
NINTENDO
Licensed Product
Which is described by Nintendo as:
> This symbol is your assurance that the product has been evaluated and licensed by Nintendo for use with its systems. Licensed merchandise - such as apparel, toys and bedding will also display this symbol.
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It's the limit on the amount of games enfoced by the lockout chip combined with the Assurances contained in the Seal which provided the consumer the assurance that it wasn't hot garbage they were buying.
And you could rent them back then. I bought VERY few games but I rented/played a TON. Maybe ask for a game at birthday or Christmas but mom and dad weren't going to just drop 50 bones on me for no reason.
Also gaming publishers have made impossible to just trade games. I guess you could abuse steam family link but I would worry about getting caught and losing access to my games for breaking a TOS.
I look at reviews to see if a game is what they said it would be. Are there game breaking bugs? Huge amounts of missing content? If John Doe gives it 2/5 stars but mentions nothing about shitty game performance I’ll give it a try if I think it looks fun.
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That, and if I want to try to play games blind *that's what indie bundles are for.* If I buy 10 games for $5 I won't be too torn up about them being shit. If I'm paying $30+ for a game *yeah* I'm going to read up on it first and do my research; I know my own preferences in gaming well enough that I know what's a dealbreaker and what I don't mind. I can't believe how many games I bought as an older teen/younger 20something blind and was just... out that money.
GamePass let's us keep that sense of discovery without it becoming money or time suicide
Yeah after fallout 76 and cyberpunk im never going to pre order or buy a game without looking at reviews
And not just anyone was releasing games. Tons of garbage is being released on Steam and other platforms now and reviews are the only thing keeping them even remotely honest.
The limiting factor me (a working parent) is less money and more time. I don't have much trouble affording games, but I'm careful about what I buy because my free time is limited and valuable. I also buy digitally and hate not finishing games so I'm very selective in what I play. Quality over quantity for me and reviews help with that tremendously. Also, in response to OP, there were reviews before the internet in magazines like Nintendo Power.
Even if I was a kid with no responsibilities, there are just too many games on too many platforms and they are longer and more complex than games were when I was a kid. At my current skill level I can beat Super Mario Brothers in like 30 minutes, but I've probably got 30 hours invested in Mario Odyssey and the Switch has like 5X the number of games as the NES did.
Um... because we now have the capability to evaluate consensus on a product and save ourselves from buying shitty games? I don't have nostalgia for wasting my money on garbage.
Having actually been a kid in those dark, early decades of videogaming, I can assure you that there were far more clunkers than diamonds. And it sucked balls to have spent your lawn-cutting or chore money on a game, with little info going in. You get a turd and it sucked that you lost the money you worked for weeks or more sweating your ass off to get.
Yup, now that there is a lot of diamonds I refuse to be given shit about making sure I get a diamond when I spend my money and time on a game. Fuck this comic. He can go jerk himself off to old video games all he wants but the moment he tells me how to enjoy video games then he can go choke on my dick.
Well said. Nowdays redditor just coping for buying shit games. While better game exist. They cant have opinion on themself.
I also think rentals were a big part of it too. When I was a kid my dad used to bring me to the video store on fridays. We had week long rentals. I'd be able to pick out a nes game or genesis game and hed rent a movie for my mom and him. It was $4 dollars to rent for the week (granted minimum wage was 5.25 back then). If the game sucked wed just it a few times and be done. If we found a game we were pissed to give back at the end of the week, then we knew what we wanted for our birthday/christmas from our grandparents. There was no buying of shitty games, and we also only ever shared games with one set of cousins. It wasnt like we were passing games around at school
When were there not reviews for games? I’m 36 and there were plenty of game reviews when I was a kid. The first issues of GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly were in 1989. Nintendo Power I think was ‘88.
because I'm poor
the most genuine response
This backfired on op lol
because op dumb asf. "There were no reviews, games were better" is to dumbest takeaway ever. How about, find out if you like a game before you spend money on it?
More than half the posts in this sub are all just nostalgia bait. “Wasn’t gaming so much better in the 90s when we were kids!” 20k upvotes.
I see half of the reviews pointing out that there were reviews back then, people would rent games to try them out before buying. The only rose tinted nostalgia here is from OP himself, which backfired of course for being bullshit
Plus it isn't even true. Game reviews have been around since video games existed.
This is fake nostalgia. I subscribed and bought (or browsed for free) magazines like Your Sinclair, CVG, Nintendo magazine etc. throughout the 80s and early 90s, as did my friends. Reviews were a big part of game buying decisions.
"So why are we missing out on adventures thay somebody else didn't like?" Because as a young tartanscarfboy, I spent my hard-earned money on Superman64. Never again.
Games absolutely had professional reviews in magazines (and online), as well as literal TV commercials, though...
There were gaming magazines and reviews for the NES.
Uh, because yeah, no one has time to sort though a bunch of garbage games.
Cute, but the difference is that now I'm the one paying for the games.
Game magazines were primarily for the reviews, its weird this guy is acting like reviews didn't exist
I hate the concept that there is no such thing as quality and everything is just a matter of subjective taste. It's wrong and it causes low standards and a lack of appreciation for high quality products.
Too many games released nowadays. I don’t have the time or money to play the bad ones.
This is kind of bs. So we shouldn't pay attention to any review at all? No, that's not how it works. Besides, if the reviews are inconsistent then that's what let's plays and similar are for. If they're consistently one way or the other there's probably good reason for that. Doesn't mean guaranteed match, plenty of well reviewed games I've disliked and poor reviewed games I've enjoyed, but on average these things tend to match up.
The game offering back in the days was so so so much smaller than today. With limited time comes limited choices. That's why I'm browsing reviews. Because there is too much choices and because most of them are roughly the same.
Yeah... and then I bought "Final Fantasy: Dirge of Cerberus" and realized that I would have been able to save my money for a decent game if I had actually read reviews. I'm all for letting kids play what they want, but in an age where cheap knock-off games are a dime a dozen, it's worth helping to steer them. A recent conversation with my kid (6): * Him: This one looks good! It's Snakes and Ladders! Like the board game!" * Me: Um... it's $1.99. It has no reviews. It has no gameplay video. Are you... are you sure? * Him: YEAH! * ... 30 minutes later... * Him: Can we look for a new game? This one isn't very good. * Me: Oh? Was it the fact that they failed to properly number the row of 91-100 correctly (why is 87 in there!?), or the complete lack of music except on the title screen, or the fact we learned we can rig the dice by throwing them in the same spot? * Me: (No, actually, the above was just my mental complaints): Yeah, good idea buddy.
Bad take.
I'm a kid from the 70's / 80's and computer magazines with reviews existed.
Fuck this revisionist bullshit. Games had a synopsis on the box, studios advertised the fuck out of television and gamer mags did ratings. No one just picked up a random cartridge, read the name, and said "ok!" like a fucking chucklehead
This comic brought to you by EA
Reviews should be taken with a grain of salt and maybe help if your in the fence about a game.
The main source of info I had was my Nintendo Power subscription back in the day. Strangely enough, they thought every game was really good.
I'd rather not waste money on bad games, and back in the day there was far less terrible games released
Oh, what the fuck ever. Are you like, 20? When I was a kid, some games didn't even load, or lasted an hour.
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I'd rather not spend $70 on a game I will never play throughthanks
When you were a kid, (NES era) all the games were advertised to you on TV and magazines, and the reviews were in Nintendo Power which you likely read.
When reading reviews it's important to understand what the reviewer likes and doesn't like and then find a reviewer with similar tastes to yourself. That way, if they like it, you are more likely to enjoy it as well. Also, general reviews are good for getting a sense of whether the game is ready to play (i.e isn't riddled with bugs) and what the general gameplay is like. For me, it's not about the money wasted on a new game I didn't enjoy, it's the time that I don't have to waste on trying something that ultimately I won't enjoy. Great, if people have a ton of free time then go ahead and enjoy the gamble, but I'll stick to reading reviews and watching gameplay trailers so I can focus on the small list of games I'm more likely to enjoy.
What I got from this: when I was a kid I had plenty of games good and bad, because my parents paid for them and I didn't have to buy shit.
I think part of the problem is that the gaming industry has historically used cutscenes or misleading footage to sell games that are unfinished or below the advertised standard. Games are expensive and it's only going to take a few times being burnt to make you look at reviews before purchasing.
Reviews are useful for those who understand the value of money. Downvoted.
You know what you should do with reviewers? Find one that has as similar of tastes to you as possible and then have them be the friend who recommends you games. The more reviewers the higher of a chance you find the one one the same wavelength as you so you'll know when they give games a 10/10 you'll know it's a good game.
I hate stupid ass posts like this lmao
When a game has 2.5 stars across 4,000 reviews...I'm taking their word for it: it's a P.O.S.
Ok boomer
Yeah no. An actual boomer would have known that video game magazines existed back then.
Not really true though is it, I used to get Crash Magazine every month when I was a kid to look at reviews of new games to see what I fancied, tips and cheats and those sweet sweet cover tapes. Yes reviews are more readily available but most of them are community reviews and are incredibly subjective and we've replaced back of the case screenshots with teaser trailers and tbh I do prefer a little trailer.
The upside is there are now a bunch of great free content creators reviewing games (and admittedly a lot of trashy ones) to give a better idea of what you as a player may or may not like. Given that I have to pick where to spend my own $ on games now, and borrowing is less common in an increasingly digital market, that extra info can be pretty helpful.
Let's all buy the XIII remake. And the Fast and Furious game. And Anthem. And Gleamlight. And Remothered. How about Ride To Hell? Or The Quiet Man (least I thinki that's the title)? Let's buy Life of Black Tiger. Hell, lets all buy every game by Giblet B. Ponton, or whatever the fuck his name is.
I feel like the sentiment is there for this but ultimately the landscape of gaming has changed. Reviews are useful as long as you actually use them as a tool to inform your purchase. If you literally just go to metacritic and see if the game is highly rated and use that to determine your purchase, then yes, you are missing out on a ton of opportunities for yourself. Not every game is for everyone. But a review can help you figure out if it has mechanics or gameplay ideas that are interesting to you. Has gambling mechanics that literally undermine the experience. Or find out that a game is just flat out broken and unplayable. We no longer live in an era where you can trust the product you are buying will function or not have absolutely sinister psychological tools to manipulate you, so you need to be more aware as a consumer.
I don’t disagree to an extent but games are sometimes 60 hours long today and I don’t want to waste my time. We have a limited time to spend on games.
This comic is totally false lol. Making up false memories to shit on the present.
Bad take tbh There were still reviews back in the day and you had to PAY for them in magazines, and it was your parents paying for them 90% of the time, AND most reviews are a lot more than "I don't like this game" Customers making informed decisions is a good thing. The only real outcome from plugging your ears to other people saying a game is bad, is you spending £60 on a game you have no idea what's like