Have Video Games been on a Downward Spiral?

earlier this summer i picked up nascar thunder 2004 from a local flea market for seven dollars this game is regarded by nascar fans as the best nascar console release of all time a game that has not been topped more than 17 years after its release when i played it i was astounded at the amount of content and gameplay variety available in a 2003 game naturally as we evaluate older media you have to excuse a certain level of crappiness due to the technical limitations of the era for example a movie from 1982 is gonna have significantly worse special effects than a movie in the present day so it's not really fair to judge older works along modern standards but just as we can forgive old media for their limitations should we punish new media for a lack of progression imagine taking a time machine back to 2003 and telling nascar fans this game right here this is as good as it's gonna get it's all downhill from here they would have thought that an asteroid must have wiped out the human civilization in 2004 because how could it be possible that despite the exponential growth and processing power and with the video game industry earning record revenue not a single company has managed to make a better game nearly two decades into the future i feel like nascar thunder represents a disturbing trend in video games as a whole in general the last decade of games has been profoundly disappointing i want to clarify here that this is not my individual opinion rather the general consensus that i've perceived from the gaming community at large i feel like everyone entered the 2010s with such optimism so many of us were eagerly anticipating how the next gen technology was going to completely transform the way we experienced our favorite games half-life fallout halo call of duty mass effect world of warcraft madden these franchises brought us some of the greatest games of the 2000s little did we know just how hard all of these beloved series would fall off a cliff i told my audience on twitter what they would prefer if they could only play games from one of these decades and remarkably 45 percent of respondents chose the 2000s this means that nearly half of all people would be willing to give up the entire eighth generation of consoles and a significant portion of the seventh gen they would be willing to give up better graphics better performance most online multiplayer games most of the games on steam most games on the app store or google play the most popular indie games seamless dlc and patches cloud storage fully integrated competitive lobbying vr xbox connect raid shadow legends they would be willing to give up all of this to go play wii sports and club penguin despite all of our next-gen technology many people feel that the games today simply aren't as good so with that being said what happened to video games the first and most obvious reason for this is the deterioration of game design 15 years ago you'd go to the store purchase the game and own the finished product then somewhere along the way companies figured out how to make players purchase the same game multiple times nowadays game studios have become all too comfortable rushing out broken unfinished products and just patching in the rest of the content in the years after release couple that with charging for dlc microtransactions and pay-to-win mechanics and consumers end up spending more for less this issue has been discussed to death here on youtube because it's inherently unsatisfying to pay full price for a game and not have it resemble a finished product until long after you've stopped caring this is a trend that's undoubtedly emerged over the past decade because if you released a broken game in the 2000s people just wouldn't buy it but even worse than releasing broken games is releasing broken games with no intent on fixing them this has been a disastrous consequence of licensing at exclusivity and no other developer symbolizes this problem more than ea sports some of you today may find this hard to believe but there was once a time when ea made great sports games like nascar thunder 2004 however in just five years ea went from releasing the best nascar console game of all time to one of the most universally hated games in the genre what happened well starting in 2003 ea brought out the exclusive rights to the nascar license prior to that you had the nascar heat and nascar racing franchises all producing quality games alongside ea the competition forced these developers to release great products after ea bought out the license they no longer had any incentive to outdo their competition and the series slowly but surely deteriorated a similar outcome happened to the madden and fifa franchises with the only difference being that ea is still holding them hostage to this day couple that with 2k's recent string of duds and we have entered a disturbing reality where there are practically no good sports games on the market these games used to be an integral part of every console generation and now they just seem to exist to fill shelf space [Music] that's a lot of damage and due to the monopolistic nature of these licensing deals it's unlikely that this trend will change anytime soon players will just keep buying the same mediocre game every year because if you want the newest game from your favorite sport there are literally no other options even without exclusive licenses the overall selection of games over the past decade has felt rather limited it's a phenomenon i call the death of the simple game when i was a kid i spent dozens of hours playing games like atv2 midnight club 3 burnout 3. these were all what i'd consider simple good games solid fun titles that didn't necessarily set the world on fire with innovation but were still nice to have in your library these were games that you could pick up and play for a couple of weeks and eventually revisit once a year or so unfortunately pretty much all of these franchises died with a decade and the 2010s were left with what felt like a huge void in good middle tier games it seems like most games these days are created to fit one of two extremes either a crappy phone game you can play on the toilet or a grandiose open world multiplayer battle royale with a 40 hour cinematic story and epic cutscenes i believe the shift towards the latter can be attributed to by far the most successful game of the 2010s minecraft the meteoric rise of minecraft led to a cataclysmic shift in what players expected out of a video game the amount of unique gameplay possibilities was virtually unlimited and it was not uncommon for players to dedicate hundreds if not thousands of hours to this single game the same is true for minecraft's less respected but equally popular cousin roblox previously games like runescape and world of warcraft would draw similar levels of dedication but they didn't come close to the immense mainstream popularity that minecraft and roblox continued to hold to this day all of the time spent on these two games is time that would have been shared among dozens of those smaller simple games from the 2000s unfortunately this has made it difficult for studios to justify creating simple games because why would someone pay for a new game when they can just stick to the unlimited gameplay variety in a game they already own this all but forces modern publishers to release lazy free-to-play games riddled with micro transactions or haphazardly shove in as many bells and whistles as possible to create what is more often than not a disappointing and incoherent mess it's so dense every single image has so many things going on another far-reaching consequence of minecraft and roblox is that they have forced every other game to prioritize online multiplayer which has in turn killed off local multiplayer some of the most fun i had as a kid was playing nintendo ds games on the bus before school the ds let you wirelessly connect to local multiplayer rooms without an internet connection and the best part was you could play games like mario kart without even owning the game yourself in my opinion this was the peak of not just local multiplayer gaming but handheld gaming yet another genre i used to really like that has gradually deteriorated over the past decade now don't get me wrong i don't hate online multiplayer my most played game of all time is team fortress 2 which is a strictly online multiplayer experience my bike is broken however i'll be the first to admit that playing against random strangers online is simply not as fulfilling as playing alongside your friends and family whom you see every day this has always been an essential part of what makes video games fun going all the way back to the days of arcades to be perfectly honest the ability to play with anybody from around the world will always be impressive on a technical level but the experience doesn't compare to the simple pleasures of just going to a friend's house to play guitar hero the harsh reality of online multiplayer is that it's very impersonal ironically despite having the potential to connect us with an infinite number of people online multiplayer has left us feeling more isolated than ever before most of the time it just feels like you're playing against very good cpus except they can trash talk you and call you bad for making a single mistake with friends it's all just casual banter but with strangers getting constantly flame can turn a fun game into an incredibly frustrating experience because of this it's not surprising why online multiplayer games tend to carry the most toxic communities and as more studios shift away from local multiplayer in favor of online play it's no wonder why games are starting to feel less fun in general speaking of which the past decade has led to a significant portion of people who no longer engage with games for fun in many aspects video games have become serious business both literally and figuratively in a literal sense the business of video games is seriously booming recently the gaming industry has become really good at making money and the money making process has made things less fun for consumers and really not fun for developers the ever increasing thirst for profit has corporatized the business at large gone are the days of scrappy passionate developers working to make their games the best that they can be modern day devs toil feverishly to meet impossible deadlines and end up creating products that both they and their audience hate back in the day this practice would manifest itself in the form of tacky licensed shovelware but some of these games ended up being pretty good at least shovelware was far easier to avoid than the predatory business models currently infesting games today modern day games are designed to be more addictive than fun and will not hesitate to take more of the players money at every opportunity for today's game companies the only high score they care about is their profit margin it doesn't matter if games are good as long as they produce revenue however the business of video games now extends far beyond the publishers players can now go into business for themselves by making money from playing games on twitch youtube or as an esports competitor because there are people watching other people play video games which to me seems ridiculous ladies and gentlemen the dream of every kid growing up in the 2000s is real but just like everything else it wasn't at all what we expected as it turns out playing games out of obligation rather than leisure is a great way to suck all the enjoyment out of whatever you're playing this leads to highly uncomfortable situations where people like wings of redemption force themselves to be publicly humiliated on a regular basis in a game they hate because it's the only way to pay his bills i'm already playing a game i don't want to play to get views [Music] i really wish i weren't here right now as for competitive play there's no shortage of people who completely burn themselves out trying to grind out an extra dozen elo points when winning is the only thing that matters the experience starts to quickly unravel when you inevitably lose i'm done making league of legends videos with more and more games introducing competitive laddering systems more people end up taking the game way too seriously look how mad you're getting over a game in either case the end result remains the same the game gets less fun calm down man it's just a game it's not just a game it's my life since when did video games get so stressful it seems like you can't even talk about video games anymore without the whole conversation devolving into a bitter argument about the nature of society i miss the days when people would fight over whether the ps3 was better than the xbox 360. nowadays everything has to be shoehorned into some hackneyed political movement gamergate and yeah yeah i get it all art is political it is absolutely vital that we dissect the socioeconomic themes of shrek swamp cart but what you may not realize is that most people play video games as a means of escapism believe it or not there are people out there in the world who don't have it so good and video games provide them with a brief reprieve from all of their problems so you may have to cut these people a little bit of slack if they don't want to dedicate their only moment of peace to militant political activism however the past decade has shown us that militant political activism has now become inescapable and if you don't use your platform to spread awareness about john c calhoun's toenail then you don't care about the world's problems we live in an age of impossible expectations everyone wants the best solution in the least amount of time and anything less than that is considered a failure this mindset applies to video games as well and has the debilitating effect of killing games before they even have the chance to succeed as soon as the hype train gets behind an upcoming title that game is doomed to a monsoon of ridicule if it falls anywhere short of perfection back in the day there was hardly any information about future game releases the first time you'd even know about a new game would be when you spotted it on the store shelves everyone would play the game first then come up with their opinions about it later nowadays the game gets announced and you have a deluge of youtubers streamers journalists and forum posters all hyping it up months or even years before it comes out many people now make up their minds about a game without even playing it all because their favorite youtubers said that it sucked this can end up truly warping the public's perception of a game no man's sky was absolutely buried in hate after its lackluster release shattered the hype bubble and even though it has slowly but surely rebounded to a solid game many players still write it off for failing to meet their initial expectations so many new releases end up dead on arrival just look at the disastrous launch of artifact a game that was instantaneously hated from the very moment it was revealed you can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half and in a vacuum artifact is nothing more than an unremarkable card game but because it was attached to the prestigious valve lineage of gems this game was doomed to fail from its very premise if artifact came out from any no-name developer it could have gone down as a perfectly average game but when people have the expectation of your company releasing innovative masterpieces average doesn't cut it great expectations make disappointment and inevitability this is why many of the most successful games over the past decade were barely promoted until after they were already on the market compare that to a platform like kickstarter which has become notorious for churning out disappointment after disappointment the main issue here isn't necessarily that these projects were mediocre or behind schedule the true problem with sites like kickstarter is that they generate massive hype for products that don't even exist yet is it really justified to feel bamboozled when you agreed to financially back an intangible product because a bunch of people hyped it up on reddit social media has effectively homogenized everyone's opinions public perception is now inexorably skewed by the circle jerk speaking of circle jerks the modern era of online communication has also contributed to the rise of the fandom this is a topic i discussed in my rick and morty video that just as easily applies to video games we now occupy an age where otherwise good games can be tarnished by an obnoxious fandom the immersive nature of video games can spawn some of the most obsessive fans of any media type fans who worship their favorite game like it's a religion it's fans like these who arguably contribute to the deterioration of game design in the industry by continually throwing money at new titles regardless of quality thus rewarding companies for predatory business practices however for every mindless fanboy the internet has created an equal and opposite stubborn contrarian the 2010s were unprecedented in the amount of cynicism and disillusionment within the general gaming community contrast this with the 2000s when it seemed like every gamer was giddy with naive optimism technology was progressing before our very eyes and there was so much to be excited about just look at e3 what was once a whimsical wonderland where gamer dreams came true these days e3 is basically treated as a giant cringe compilation it seems that as the games themselves have become less fun gamers have had to seek out entertainment from other sources you pop this piece of crap in and what do you get well i'm done making league of legends videos youtube critics like the angry video game nerd made an entire generation of gamers realize that deriding bad games could be just as fun as enjoying good games as it turns out it's a lot more compelling to watch someone tell you why a game sucks rather than why it's good on youtube there's a market incentive to ridicule games as much as possible nobody ever makes a video about a game being decently adequate but when a game misses the mark all the biggest commentators come out and blasted nowadays everyone is aware of the circus that is yandere sim but how many of us can actually name a single other game in the genre i know i can't i've never played a single anime related game in my entire life and yet my whole perception of the genre is negative because of a single eccentric story that's been blown up by youtube commentators online discourse puts the negativity bias on steroids and it has without a doubt contributed to the prevailing cynicism of the past decade sometimes it feels like people these days are actively rooting for games to fail so they can participate in the festival of mockery 20 years ago when a game flopped nobody really cared that much but when studios release a bad game now they get absolutely hammered for months on end so with that in mind if you're a game studio planning your next release why would you even want to risk provoking the online mob by attempting anything new or innovative the best course of action is to just play it safe by releasing bland formulaic crowd pleasers that most people will forget about before the end of the year at least then you avoid a flaming pr disaster even if it does induce a perpetual state of mediocrity what makes this even worse is how relentlessly nitpicking games is now being treated as some kind of cool personality trait it seems like no matter what game you play these days you'll encounter some jaded contrarian calling you dumb for liking it this elitist gatekeeping was nowhere near as prevalent in the past as back then nobody really cared what video games you played for fun now they're treated as an indictment against your entire personality at least that's how it feels when you enter any comment section on the web the last decade has seen gamers become irrevocably polarized so much so that it's impossible to tell what they really want anymore for so many years gamers had this myopic obsession with graphics and realism to such an extent that they would weigh graphical fidelity higher than any other design aspect and now every game has amazing graphics yet seem to be lacking in all other areas of design graphics are better than ever before while gamers have never been more miserable if it's not fun why bother turns out that gamers much like any other consumer base don't really know what they want and now that most of us have been thoroughly put off by the uncanny valley mannequins of modern day games we've actually seen studios moving back to the low poly cartoony aesthetics of the 2000s gamers will complain about a franchise like pokemon failing to innovate in releasing the same game over and over even though across practically all genres sequels remakes and remasters continue to sell consistently well and i don't exactly see everyone rushing out to go buy the most experimental avant-garde titles at all times so you want a realistic down-to-earth game that's completely off the wall and swarming with magic robots ultimately if you have a formula that works and makes money why would you have any reason to change it similarly if you already have a library of games you enjoy playing why would you go out and buy a new one that you probably won't even like and that brings me to my final point about why modern games just don't feel as fun to play there is so much gaming content today that simply didn't exist 20 years ago people these days will spend hours playing a game then hours watching youtubers review games then hours watching twitch streamers play games none of these things are particularly bad on their own but combined they can burn people out on new games faster than ever before after a while it all becomes a bit exhausting the market is so saturated with gaming related content that it's hard for anything to stand out at some point it's difficult to justify spending time caring about any new games because so many good ones already exist the sad truth is that most of us just can't get that excited about new games anymore coffee back in the 2000s we got to see major strides in technological progress year after year stuff we take for granted today like online play and hd graphics used to be mind-blowing achievements back in the day but now that the current paradigm has fulfilled most of its potential innovation as of late has felt much more marginal in its progress once something becomes advanced enough you can only do so much to improve it further the differences between a ps1 game and a ps2 game are immediately clear but are ps3 games really that far off from ps4 games in terms of specific game design many of the most compelling gameplay concepts have already been done i mean for the past 5 years the most popular games have all been different spin-offs of the battle royale game type overwatch is just tf2 mixed with league of legends valorent is just counter-strike mixed with overwatch pretty much any new game that comes out today is directly comparable to something that already exists it's for this reason that the 2010s have seen an unprecedented trend in players preferring to stick with older titles like tf2 and melee these games feel like the ideal versions of what their successors have attempted to replicate older games are also much more likely to have active modding communities who only seek to further perfect these already great titles modders can often perform amazing feats with no budget deadlines or expectations melee's community created netplay is a free service that functions better than nintendo's own dedicated servers for smash ultimate which by the way you have to pay for if you had to pick between these two options which would you honestly choose and with all that being said have video games been on a downward spiral i'm not going to sit here and tell you the answer because just like any video game out there it's subjective but if you want my opinion on the matter i don't actually believe that things are as gloomy as the majority of internet commentators would have you believe not every game is going to be a masterpiece that's what makes each masterpiece so special it's important to understand where games go wrong but we should also give credit where credit is due and not discard an entire body of work for minor infractions our favorite franchises from the 2000s may have fallen on hard times but just like in every other decade new ones will inevitably rise up to take their place i feel like gaming is in a highly transitional state right now much like when video games transition from arcades to home consoles there's a lot of chaos and uncertainty in the industry so is the whole business just doomed to crash and burn and bury itself in the new mexico desert most likely not because as much as gamers like to complain and ridicule the games they play we all know they're just gonna buy the next one anyway even though it may seem like everyone hates games these days people wouldn't get so frustrated if they didn't love games deep down at the end of the day everyone's just trying to recapture that feeling a total immersion in a virtual world or at least any feeling besides the jaded disgruntled cynicism of the real world not every game will help you accomplish this so consider yourself lucky when you find one that does anyway in conclusion pokemon go was the most fun i had in any game from the past decade and i rate nascar thunder04 an 8 out of 10. bold brazen audacious unapologetically defiant these are the words i found in my thesaurus which are necessary to describe the new emperor lemon downward spiral signature collection two years ago teespring unceremoniously removed my original design for trademark infringement well guess what ya bunch of idiots how about i remove myself from your entire website and start selling my stuff anywhere else emp was seriously pissed off and for a moment there i thought there was going to be an incident but luckily that didn't happen oh you want to talk about trademark infringement i'll show you trademark infringement i'll give them the greatest trademark infringement anyone's ever seen you know these designs they're quite similar to the ones they have it oh no patented downward spiral old family recipe the new totally not trademark infringement collection is now available at crowdmade.com impulmon or in the merchandise shelf beneath this very video you lucky bastard to be honest i don't even think emp is doing this for the money i just think that he's really bitter about teespring and wants to stick it to him oh what's that tea spring yeah sorry never heard of him must be an inferior brand why don't you go ahead and head over to crowdmade.com and get yourself a fabric print that won't wash out in a month [Music] did you juice yourself i know i did hey okay to name gaming keeps my game do you like rpgs because whether you do or you don't freak you go to kickstarter.com and check out the game away from home you malnourished soyboy shut up it's not just the game it's my life and i can't just shut up it's not just a game it's my life i can't just let i'm thinking shut up it's not just a game it's my life i can't just let him think that he can come in and ruin my life like that

Channel: EmpLemon

Views: 789,255

Rating: 4.8320947 out of 5

Keywords: EmpLemon, Video Games, Gaming, Fallout 76, No Man's Sky, Artifact, Madden, Halo, Halo Infinite, PS4, Xbox, Playstation, Minecraft, Roblox, Fifa, Fortnite, Among Us, Fall Guys, Team Fortress 2, TF2, Overwatch, CS:Go, Twitch, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, Valve, Dunkey, AVGN

Id: gOovr8C_P6U

Length: 27min 56sec (1676 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Steven_1421]

babe! its 4pm! time to watch another 25+ minute video of emp complaining about how great the 2000s were.

[u/MauriceIsNotMyName]

Well, I liked it. I don't see a problem expressing how things were better back then, because sometimes they are.

[u/nullmother]

This video feels like “Old Man Yells At Cloud” 2000’s edition

[u/TheDoomslayer121]

Vid was pretty good though id argue that the industry has been going more of an upward spiral, he does bring up points like how peoples opinions of certain games can be molded by first impressions, and no man's sky was a good example. Even long after they did all the patchwork and constant updates, there is still a considerable amount of people who still write NMS as a scam.

[u/ManSkirtDude101]

This whole video is just emp putting on nostaligia tinted glasses.

I think a lot of the "modern games are bad" trope is coming from that there are more games coming out than ever and it's more accessible than ever. Games are more replayable than ever. It's a shame emplemon didn't even mention the indie scene at all. Yeah, there is more room for bad games, but there is a ton of good modern games out there if you just look. Also, I like games getting more political, entertainment can be political and still be escapist.

[u/its_a_simulation]

Well this was bad. Wonder why most people aren't playing the "objectively" better 2000's games rathen than these shitty new games then.

[u/Sly_Lemon]

I feel like some people in these comments haven't watched the video, or atleast until the end. Though he does criticize the industry today he gives credit to it, and clearly says at the end "I don't actually believe that things are as gloomy as the majority of internet commentators would have you believe".

[u/Hero-the-pilot]

I mean 2010s was the rise of indie devs. He went over a quick section but that’s really the most important part. We got so many good games out of indie devs and so many inventive and creative people behind them. Some of my favorite are Minecraft, Shovel Knight, Enter the Gungeon, Meatboy, Spelunky, Fez, Lisa, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Hotline Miami like you can go on and on but you get the point. The 2010s showed that people want these games and they can become mainstream and can succeed.

[u/Nolar2015]

Emp's nostalgia tinged nihilistic doomer outlook in full fledge here. This video was hard to watch. I love him for his interesting videos profiling peoples careers and things that happened but hes such a fucking nihilistic doomer that any of his more personal and opinionated videos becomes almost unwatchable