ZDoom

Rachael wrote:Once Wall Street entered big gaming - that's when the toxic culture started permeating once beloved game studios - leaving them a mere shell of what they once were, effectively turning them into nothing more than cash cows to produce interactive media. Blizzard is probably the best, perhaps even most unfortunate, example of this. (Arguably EA was always toxic to begin with. lol)

In that "oldschool retro fps" age, there was also the dark age of corporately-run gaming communities too. It's far much less now for us than it was in 1997-2008... So many works lost by petty sysop-level backstabbing/reluctancy to run their ads/use their ad-filled file services/using competitor's generously provided mirrors, etc. Doomworld might as well be the sole survivor from that time.

Rachael wrote:Big money (i.e. Rich People) shunned games in the 90's because gamers were seen as deviants, and gaming in general was regarded as satanic and unusual.

Big money was in (and out) of gaming in the 80s. Hell, in the '70s, even. The Craft was impure and tainted by the dread lord Mammon well before your birth.

Yeah, don't let those glasses get too rose tinted...

Kinsie wrote:

Rachael wrote:Big money (i.e. Rich People) shunned games in the 90's because gamers were seen as deviants, and gaming in general was regarded as satanic and unusual.

Big money was in (and out) of gaming in the 80s. Hell, in the '70s, even. The Craft was impure and tainted by the dread lord Mammon well before your birth.

That may be true but it wasn't the kind of commercialization that we have seen in the last 10 years.

I have been working in the industry for 20 years and things definitely changed for the worse over time. In the beginning it was possible for a small company to produce competitive product, but as time went on it first became more economical to do contract work for larger outfits, and later it became unfeasible to do anything without some external financing. Which ultimately meant that creative control went ever more to people with no clue about the product.

I dunno, between cheaper/more accessible development tools, varying-scale digital distribution services on PC and self-publishing programs on mobile and console I'd say it's easier than ever for small teams and one-man bands - what was once the self-dubbed-tapes-in-baggies crowd - to inflict their creations upon a wider world and make a buck off of it without having to resort to crunching their way to the other side of Licensed Nickelodeon Platformer # 8763.

It's that awkward middle ground between Indie and AAA that never quite recovered from the triple-whammy of the dawn of HD consoles, smartphone apps and the Global Financial Crisis. Your middle-budget console games, mediocre movie licenses and such. That middle-ground seems to be loosely congealing together again in a new and fascinating form as some Indies get large enough to not quite fit the Indie label anymore, and as content-providers start coughing out money for subscription services like Game Pass, Apple Arcade et. al.

Strange times, but also fascinating and slightly exciting times. More good than bad for the various niches and corners I care about, anyway.

Yes, that market seems to improve slowly. 5 years ago, when I quit, it was in a dismal shape - but even now, I do not really see that this niche can really finance a small team of developers reliably.

Not to go all reductio ad absurdum, but this whole concept may be unique to video games. I can't ever remember witnessing discussions about "the last good retro novel" or "the last good retro film noir" or even "the last good retro station wagon." Something is good or not. Bad writing is bad writing. Bad design is bad design. Crap is crap even if it sells - and it overwhelmingly does for mystifying reasons. I suppose the reason Doom is played to this day and not Corridor 7 is partly due to passionate choices made at the time. Maybe the Doom team was hungry. Hunger is not a safe space.

As science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon allegedly said, "Ninety percent of everything is crap." He outrageously underestimated. All the same one person's crap is another's fertilizer. I don't know who watches those alphabet soup crime shows, either. I've never gotten jollies out of playing games so much as wondering how they work, retro or not. There's something pure in the appeal of a game made because. We all can sense it when it happens. Doom is one of those unique games, so it seems to me. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but from all I've read it seems like those writing it at the time knew they were onto something special. That just doesn't happen very often in the vast ocean of crap. A game made to just make money is like anything else made to be consumed. And we all know what happens after something is consumed.

But hey that's just my opinion. And we all know what opinions are like.

I dunno, I think within genre, "retro" is absolutely a thing in other types of media. There are movies (neo-noir, anyone?), music, and even, though more rarely, books which seek to evoke nostalgic feelings in the audience. Definitely not as common as in gaming, but that it probably because gaming as a medium has evolved more, and faster, than comparable mediums. That said, people still make black-and-white and/or silent films every so often. And hell, while I might be opening a can of worms, but even Star Wars was designed to harken back to pulp flicks, and look at how mainstream that got.

Hey Doomer wrote:Not to go all reductio ad absurdum, but this whole concept may be unique to video games. I can't ever remember witnessing discussions about "the last good retro novel" or "the last good retro film noir" or even "the last good retro station wagon."

Well...

First the discussion isn't about the last good retro FPS. It's about the last retro FPS. It's trying to define the boundary of the genre, not a question of quality.

But you can be sure to find discussions about the last good black & white movie, and before that about the last good silent movie. And I guess movies like Schindler's List or The Artist could be seen as throwback retro movies since they were made in black-and-white out of stylistic choice rather than out of technical limitation.

Likewise for automobile. You definitely have communities of enthusiasts for "classic cars", and you likewise have an entire genre of retro-styled automobiles like the Jeep Wrangler or the New Beetle.

So, no, it's not in any way unique to video game.

I think what really buffs the video games "retro" popularity is "retro" is still quite recent - the 90's mostly, in fact - but it's also a throwback to a time before heavy market exploitation came into the picture.

Modern movies and cars don't suffer from problems like 8 different editions that are more expensive than the $60 base game that is barely a game, 10-20 different DLC packs, loot boxes and barrages upon barrages of microtransactions, constant always-online DRM, gaslighting customers into believing that singleplayer is not popular simply so they can get all players online on their game servers where they can control them (and shove microtransactions into their faces), forbidding developers on really investing any meaningful time into actual enjoyable gameplay, shoving daily grindy "chores" with virtual rewards into your face in order to keep you online and playing, and pretty much transforming modern gaming into a job.

It's really not that games with modern graphics are bad. It's more that modern gaming has turned into a cash cow and taken the fun out of it. I think retro games, while they would still be more popular than retro cars or movies, would be far less popular than they are now if it weren't for all the fuckery that came with it.

Gez wrote: First the discussion isn't about the last good retro FPS. It's about the last retro FPS. It's trying to define the boundary of the genre, not a question of quality.

Right you are about that. My bad!

Seems to me early vs. new games can be framed as an issue of thresholds similar to silent/talkies, vinyl/digital, VCR/streaming and perhaps not "retro" in the sense of reviving the past for nostalgic reasons. Then what are those thresholds? Exploiting consumers to absurd degrees seems to be one of them (I haven't played anything multiplayer since Quake II, so I'll accept that as true).

Rachael wrote:It's really not that games with modern graphics are bad. It's more that modern gaming has turned into a cash cow and taken the fun out of it. I think retro games, while they would still be more popular than retro cars or movies, would be far less popular than they are now if it weren't for all the fuckery that came with it.

It has a lot of issues itself, and again I don't want to derail the subject, but I think Elden Ring is a fantastic counter-example to "modern" gaming. Granted, it does have online features (which may be good or bad depending on your outlook), but beyond that, there's nothing to buy except the game, and maybe(?) some DLC to follow, and it is absolutely FULL of content. I've played well over 100 hours and I've not finished a single ending yet, and that's all single-player content because I don't really like PVP. Like I said, there are a lot of issues of convenience/quality-of-life and balance (or lack thereof), but Elden Ring feels like it was plucked from an alternate timeline where the design ethos of AAA games went in a 90-degree angle from where it is now.

All that being said, I wouldn't call it "retro" because it's not really a throwback to anything except expectations of the player... and occasionally overly obscure mechanics/UI/quests/etc. Not to mention, I've heard that work expectations at FromSoft are not much better than the rest of the industry, with regard to crunch and worker treatment, so there are aspects which (subjectively) good game design and ethos just don't affect.

Hey Doomer wrote:Not to go all reductio ad absurdum, but this whole concept may be unique to video games. I can't ever remember witnessing discussions about "the last good retro novel" or "the last good retro film noir" or even "the last good retro station wagon."

Incorrect.

Scripten wrote:It has a lot of issues itself, and again I don't want to derail the subject, but I think Elden Ring is a fantastic counter-example to "modern" gaming. Granted, it does have online features (which may be good or bad depending on your outlook), but beyond that, there's nothing to buy except the game, and maybe(?) some DLC to follow, and it is absolutely FULL of content. I've played well over 100 hours and I've not finished a single ending yet, and that's all single-player content because I don't really like PVP. Like I said, there are a lot of issues of convenience/quality-of-life and balance (or lack thereof), but Elden Ring feels like it was plucked from an alternate timeline where the design ethos of AAA games went in a 90-degree angle from where it is now.

All that being said, I wouldn't call it "retro" because it's not really a throwback to anything except expectations of the player... and occasionally overly obscure mechanics/UI/quests/etc. Not to mention, I've heard that work expectations at FromSoft are not much better than the rest of the industry, with regard to crunch and worker treatment, so there are aspects which (subjectively) good game design and ethos just don't affect.

This is really an example more of an exception, not the rule. And no, I definitely would not call that particular game "retro" - it does not fit the style.

I think in general my point still applies. If there was a more ethical standard by which modern games in general followed, retro probably would be a lot less popular. Which is also to say - I think the popularity of retro games is being artificially propped up by the lack of exploitative marketing tricks that they (in most cases) contain.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Sorry for being unclear, I was agreeing and offering up an example in support of your statement.