I agree, quality has dropped.

And games are too Americanized also, especially Tomb Raider which is a big shame. America isn't the world you know.

I do believe that the quality has gone down. But I do think this is only a phase, its still the begining of this gen and developers have much higher expectations that are forced onto them such as graphics, AI, story, and multiplayer. Last gen had some quality games but thats because the developers had ample amounts of time to mess around with the hardware. I do think that this year is when we will start to see the games start to step up to our expectations.

Its not so much as dropped but more so suffered with the increase development costs, which I guess leads to a drop in innovation across all platforms to release new and dynamic IP's. Shorter risks are being taken and when it is, critics and gamers alike have unreasonably high expectations.

Awesome.  Can't wait!

I agree too. But not this gen only. I believe last gen (ps2, xbox) was low quality too.

This generation is all about fps. Don't get me wrong. I love them. But they are only mindless fun. They're not for hard-core gaming (Oh, and they don't belong on consoles)

Last generation was full of button-mashing games (god of war etc). I never got those games.

I believe the gaming quality peaked with the ps1. All games were of the same graphics (more or less) so all the resources went into creativity. Also some pretty innovative things were done with the (then new) third dimension.

psn id: gingo...i dont think the actual programming or such has gone down but theres not many new ideas coming to the table that are fantastic, i mean there are no characters like mario, sonic, crash bandicoot, spyro, lara croft being created that are epic, ubisoft had a go with altair but he still doesn't come up to standards with those i mentioned

It has droped, hopefully the quality will go up

@ jockamo

"Awesome. Can't wait!"???

Wow, blame it on America again. Not our fault that games have become increasingly a major part in society, its not one country's fault. Its because so many companies believe they can make money in gaming that they put out consoles straining the developers. Causing ports or multi-platform games to stay in business. To be honest I think quality has gone up. look at crysis, halo, resistance, ratchet and clank, half-life quality has increased, but i would say the mentality has gone down and been replaced with ignorance.

jockamo........................ whats your problem?

I think the issue isn't one of quality in terms of programming really and I think Jon Hare may have got his wires crossed. Where he may have a point is the influx and over reliance on third party middleware. It really all started with the PS2 generation with graphics engines being brought off the shelf like Renderware and continued this generation with the ubiquitous UTIII engine and soon the CryEngine2. Still by utilising middleware developers are able to concentrate on developing the game itself and get the balance right, thus improving the quality of games, but yes it has led to a dip in the number of programmers who can develop graphics engines etc. teams do now seem to focus massively on the 3D artists and 3D Studio Max experts the UK's own Codemasters are a perfect example of this trend, getting rid of the majority of their programmers, coders etc. and getting in hoardes of graphics guys. However if the overall quality of the product increases is it a problem?

Agree!

I feel that most 3rd parties have gotten real lazy especially Square.

Only company i would say is 100% lazy free is Insomniac

I don't think it's dropped. I think they have more to do and people expect too much.

i do agree, i think it has dropped but like others have said i believe it will be just a phase.... i think the problem lies in our cultures emphasis on HD, AI, and what not things that take money to back them..... the reason why i think this is the problem is because a company isnt going to put out the cheddar($$) for a game that they believe wont do well, or has a chance to fail........ so they stick to what they kno and whats the "easier" type of game to develop. Also as much as a i do agree, i believe it will change. As companies gain experience with the development on next gen systems, the costs involved will most likely decrease slightly allowing more companies to take more risks...... but thats just my view on it

EA Sports had the best sports games in the 90's.... They've gone to crap since, very little updating and now controlling official licenses is crap!

i say they did..cuz now im playing games but im not getting that feeling i was getting along time ago..the feeling that didnt make me put the controller down the feeling that just made me very happy that i got such a great quality game...with such rich game play, story, and fun....most games today feel like there getting to be very very short..

last great game was heavenly sword and that ended up VERY short and alot of button mashing...only reason why its good in my eye was that its the only game i saw in some time with a GREAT story line

game devs need to work on making there games longer and also they need to find a way to get a fresh feeling

@bluesuedeshoes

Man I think you are ead on with that one. Personally I think its the american mindset to do it the easy way therefore these engines and API's become a way of life and they do not want to go beyond that. Not even for the sake of art or for some sake of pride or even the ability to say  "hey! Look at what we did!"

I have always looked more to european and japanese devs to push the boundaries. Even in this generation where the whining has gotten louder I still see fewer complaints coming from overseas.

Soon we will eventually see the line between good devs and great ones and I will show my appreciation where it counts. I will purchase the games that push the boundaries and challenge conventions. I did it last generation as well. The most talented evs consistantly produce brilliant work.

I think once we see more games like COD4 with great multiplayer and upcoming games like KillZone,and littleBig Planet we wont think this anymore.  We just need to get these games out !!

Personally I blame EA and the big multi-merged power houses. They swallow up any new creative IP and force the comanies to spew out mass sequels that really offer nothing at all.

Take a look at all the titles available from EA and see how many of them are re-hashes of the same old game again and again.

Do we really need a football game every year - possibly twice a year if you include the world cup/euro games.

Shame on you EA!

I'm back been a while lol

well lets see the gaming community has definetly have risen the bar of what true next gen gaming is, maybe this new generation is not next gen te way we hoped for or maybe were not capable of producing next gen games like we thought.... given time im pretty sure we will see an increase in the quality of games.

The consumer demand is actually quite high as well, were ranting and raving to produce A+++ games in a short time span which gives devs no possible way of accomplishing such great obstacles, and if they do comeplete in such a short mannre of time were upset because the game is short. The years of developing games is no longer the 1 -2 years span, If were going to see true next gen then expect it to be released in 3 to  4  years span.

with all the cost going to development it becomes kind of necessary to stick with the safe route, Like it or not FPS sell and with that devs know they wont fail going into that genre. They should make a devs website were we can give them ideas to help them create dynamic ip's. (If there isnt one already). We need to help them as well in order to produce the A+++ games that we are so craving for, needless to say it shouldn't all just rely on the devs.

i agree with killercop, games are too americanized.....way too americanized..

The problem with this is that you aren't saying what you mean by quality, because if I thought you meant quality on tech specs I'd think you're crazy. And if I knew what you meant by Americanized I'd give my opinion. But I do think that there aren't many new ideas for games, and many will agree, but to all of you complaining about it, they seriously can't make brand new things all the time. Everything gets used up, and it's just hard to make a new idea for every game. Yes a lot of games suck, and yes I now only have like four next gen games because they're the only good ones. But it's the way the industry works now, and we are getting quality games like Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, Halo 3, and hopefully the new Final Fantasies and Kingdom Hearts. But really, put yourself in their position and try and think of how you would make an amazing game, and go try and do it.

Maybe quality has gone down, but innovation has risen. New gameplay types, new IP's. Not just platformers or  fps.

The quality has dropped. When it comes down to developing games especially for the PS3 certain game developers seem to get lazy and don't want to take on the challenge of the Playstation next-gen console. I thought once you get a degree in computer progarmminmg you always strive on tackling something new like the PS3 hardware instead of going to that rival console saying that is much easier to develop on.

Sometimes, it's all about money, as in EA's perspective. Then, we have amazing developers like Square Enix that are more woried about their product than profit.

I miss the SNES days. So many great titles during those times... Chrono... Mana... FF... :(

"quality of programming has gone down" - wrong. Programmers are told what to write - they dont just make it all up. The game designers and producers are to blame for a crap title. Dont throw this back onto the working man.

And about the question: no, i dont think games have declined in quality. I think they've gotten about 1000% times better.. how can you even compare sweeping landscapes, 100+ hours of gameplay and 25,000+ voice over works to the likes of say Mario... it was a good game back in the day, and it still is - but i'd take Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction over Super Mario Bros any day of the week. i'd even take Crash Bandicoot. People are just looking for reason to complain.

dhrussell hit it on the head there, people are always looking for something to complain about. I honestly will take Resident Evil 4 or COD4 over any stupid mario game and its annoying when ppl say tehy are the best games ever, cause really they aren't.

Me too,game r way short now(except Oblivion)

I disagree in a way. The needed work to make a game today is a lot more than the old 2d games we had 20 or so years ago. Any developer today could smack up a Mario or any SNES game up in no time. I do think developers are becomming lazy. Because of all the extra work a good game takes these days, developers are looking for any way possible to make their life easier, and this includes programming for a platform that is simpler. Some companies are trying to work very hard. Square Enix is working hard on Final Fantasy. Gurilla Studios is working hard on KILLZONE 2. SONY is working hard on the new HOME service. These new games will take 4 years to make IF THEY ARE TO REALLY BE THE BEST POSSIBLE. If they don't take that needed time, you end up with either a good short game, or a long crappy one. Did you know that Grand Turismo 5 takes 185 days to create a single car? You people complaine because you don't understand how hard it is to actually develop a good game. This is why all those really big games for PS3 are not released yet. It's been about 2 years since the Playstation 3 launched. Expect a few great games this year, but don't be sad if a few dont get delayed until 2009 (which would be the 3 year mark) which is around the time it would take to make a good game. There is a reason for delays, they don't just want to make you wait. They want to show you some good games (to distract you) while they work on the great ones. Once those big games are out, you will be so happy you won't notice anything until the next 2-4 year jump when the even better games hop in.

Put simply, if you compare the work developers had to do in the past, to the amount of work they have to do now (notto mention games are better now), no I do not think quality has gone down.

I think the main probelm's are comparison's, We all remember the ps2's final games which were some of the best games EVER made and then BOOM Next Gen hits us and we have got amazing graphics/physics/sound and so on but no real true "sink your teeth into lose mothns of sleep games" and thats th real problem.

I think this generation of games have an unreachable target to live upto i mean for example how is the next tomb raider supposed to compete with the first time you played tomb raider and sat there in awe. Or final fantasy i have increaible high hopes for FF13  but how is any rpg suppsoed to compete with the first time you played FFVII and you just stayed up all night playing refusing to go to sleep.

I know that sounds like im talking about old ip's vs new ip's but im not, its hard to explain what i really mean but ill try one more.

When we all heard about the power of next gen consoles our minds ran wild and i mean WILD but now its here. It's far from dissapointing im actually really really impressed and its still early:) im sure most of us have sat there playing all the new games and at some point gone HOLY MOTHER OF GOD look at the graphics or listen dude i can hear bullets like i never heard before. but how many have sat there ant the end of a next gen game and gone wow i will remember this forever.....

thats my take on it anyway

Ironic. We were just talking about this in my "Intro to Computer Game Creation" class. There seems to be a delicate balance of innovation and conformity in game creation. Now that game developers have become multi-million dollar companies, it becomes a bigger goal to recoup your developing losses more than being innovative. Don't get me wrong, there is an overflow of innovation in the gaming market, but innovation can only take you so far. This seems to also apply to the movie industry as well. A lot of companies go with what they know will sell.

A big conformity of games are first-person shooters. They've been gaining popularity for some time now and there seems to be quite an overflow right now, with recent titles such as Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, and Unreal Tournament 3. There are however a few exceptions to this. Big selling games, like God of War and Assassin's Creed, and upcoming games, like LittleBigPlanet and Echochrome, all show a major amount of innovation and yet still follow the beaten path to some degree.

I think innovation and quality go hand in hand. You can keep making the best FPSs, but if you can't make each successive copy better, you aren't innovating, which is two steps back, not one step forward.

WE ARE ALL LOOKING AT YOU, EA.

if there is anything in games that have dropped then for ma people the gameplay is the only thing that has had a dip in quality. obviously visuals have improved and any developer making good games on PS3 shows that the programmers have improved, they need to for the PS3.

For myself I find that I'm playing more games this gen than the last.

I agree. Way back (e.g. in times of counter strike, starcraft etc) programmers/develpoers gave much more thought to gameplay rather than graphics.....CS and starcraft are still played a lot and theyre about a decade old. I mean honestly...how many people, whilst playing a game stop to appreciate how realistic that 'leaf falling' looked. If you are playing the game properly and the programmers have done a half good job of making the gameplay enjoyable, there is no time to stop and notice insignificant details like that (not to say gravity engines arent cool..but theres a line). To tell you the truth, with the introdction of blu-ray and the inherent increase in storage capacity (and hence graphics complexity), I think the problem will continue to perpetuate with the focus futher being taken off gameplay. I just hope that the programmers/developers dont let the graphics fads get to their head too much.

Sackboy. Surprised not to see anyone talking bout LBP here. It doesn't get more inovative than that.

yes it has.

Some things that come to mind:

(1) Theres no heart in it.

People who use to make games in the early 80's to mid 90's did so for love not profit. Usually the owners where programmers who where directly involved in production and made decisions based on what would make a great game. Some developers even completed titles out of their own pocket (Eg: Sirroco with the Wizardry series Canadian staff paid for the last game out of severance). With the exception of Atari, the larger firms; Nintendo & Sega also had a big focus on quality during this time, and in most cases due to lack of graphics had to work harder on story line or character development to make the games attractive. Today; the people running the game developers don't know anything about games. Its their job not their passion. Quite often development teams are forced by the publishers or owners to create sequel after sequel...long after the original creators have lost heart in the product. The lead creator might say “this is the last” “this is where my story ends” – but Konami (MGS) or Microsoft (Halo) or Sony (GOW) will never let it die so long as there is still a buck in it.

(2) Americanization

As with Hollywood films, producers want to appeal to mass audiences (and not niche markets) so they dumb down the story to keep it simple for everyone. They use base sex or violence etc as the only real draw card and rely on graphic special effects (lots of explosions) to dazzle their audience instead of intriguing them. I think this is what most people call Americanizing the content. All the characters are wafer thin stereo types that have been spoon fed to audiences over the past few decades. The goodies are white Americans (like the target audience) and the baddies are black (at the moment Arabs or aliens) they don't make it any more complex than that. ... Games might be flashy but they are not art.

(3) Great Expectations.

People should expect quality. After all, you are paying for it. Problem is marketing people are very good at telling you what your expectations should be and they use peer pressure, sensationalism - every trick in the book to make you see things their way. More often than not you go along because its easier not to think, not to stand out - especially in a forum where you might get criticized .... So after all that hype is put out into the market and you buy that game - you are rarely satisfied...but there is always another game being released around the corner...maybe that one will scratch that itch....then again maybe not - repeat infinitum.

(4) Slowly bit by bit you accept the degredation.

Quality has definitely declined as it becomes a business and you a captured audience. You sit back and accept high prices, constant upgrades, episodic sequel after sequel, low quality and soon chock full of in game advertising. You all swallow.  Consumers for the most part are dumb shmucks and taking their valuable pocket money, mortgage payments or savings is pretty easy....Mooo Moooo the cows all follow each other to the milking shed. Fanboyism is brand alignment...its a sad invention but you accept it and worst, you wear it like a badge of pride. But don't feel to bad as you're part of the majority. Don't take it personal as there are some very persuasive forces working you over. At the moment games can fleece you faster than movies so its attracting all the very best snake oil sales people. I too am a victim, but every now and again, on my way to slaughter house I like to mooo mooo "danger danger" as I put my head in the block....Karching!

Have fun.

Well,it's too early to call,remember the problems ps2 had,when it launched,and had Ridged Racer 4 and Tekken Jag Tournament as launch titles,yeah you probably don't,because you are too busy admiring games like God Of War,MGS 3 and so on and so on.See,every gen HAS to start off slow,to gain a proper momentum.Every dev has to fight with the display in the beginning of a gaming generation,and as time passes,you get back the creativity.Either way,this is probably the BEST ever first year performance for this generation as a whole,great new IPs,brilliant sequels,i think it is a bit unfair to call the Hard work of a 500+ team,poor in quality.

No one is dizzing Americans. Its not a racial thing - its a cultural one. Do you understand what is meant by the term "beer & circuses" ? They are just saying that the American population have lots of Beer & Circuses...

They are also saying that America is not the center of the world from a cultural point of view and the population is not the majority either. Games are made for American audiences more often than not because they consume a lot of this type of entertainment.

Mooo Mooo

Very well put, Cleaner.  I hate the whole idea of Americanization, because I live in the US, yet it is so true.  If I hadn't been purposefully keeping myself from the herd of sheep (conformity), the whole stupid American pig stereotype might actually hurt.  It hurts to see our country putting explosions and sex in every movie now just to make a buck.  I much prefer the writings of Kevin Smith (Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob) to the high dollar failures (Dragon Wars comes to mind).

Agreed

Just look at EA for an example

a lot of the quality has dropped, but we still have really good games made by the few, and inovative. Call of Duty 4 was genius, FolkLore is highly inovative, haze also seems to be another great game. It's just the we hit a wall, and its hard to make progress when so many things have already been tried. Also the complexity of programing has gone up dramatically, this means more time programing and less time inovating while it also means making the most creative ideas come to life means the most work.  People also expect better and better graphics, this takes more and more time from inovation.  BUT i see a trend, many of the latest games are becoming more inovative, in order to compete others will have to follow through.

BTW: people never complained about japinized games, why all of a sudden hit on America?