To me it seems the "golden age" of gaming for everyone here has actually nothing to do with the games per se. I have nostalgia as well from when i was 12-18 when we did lan parties every weekend. But I actually think my golden age of gaming is still going. I have been gaming consistently through my college education and now when I am working. I have found new games (and old classics that i continue to play from time to time) and never stopped. I suspect it will end only when/if i move in together with my SO and get kids or something.
I feel in general that people are bad at keeping long friendships, and I seem very good at it (I don't know why). I have ~20 close friends that I speak to regularly that I have known for like 10 years. Many of those are people from the "golden days".
Have people that say they miss the "golden days" just not kept in touch with the friends they had at that time?
Or have they just given up on gaming because everyone else they knew stopped playing?
The age before the internet and monetization where we owned are games and internet penetration hadn't allowed companies to steal videogames functionality with drm.
The 90's AAA game modding scene was heads and shoulders above the modern AAA space because there was no internet, there was no incentive to hold back free level editors, file specs, access to contents inside the game files.
The last 20 years has undermind that hugely in big budget games. How could would have it have been to have level editing and a programming SDK for Need for speed Most wanted 2005? OR mass effect 1 + 2 for instance?
We've definitely lost a lot as game companies are forcing games into the mainframe dumb client model. AKA literally preventing you from owning the game you are buying.
Given that has always been the end goal of these companies since the beginning. Game preservation is going to be a nightmare going forward for all these server locked games.
So to say now is the golden age, means you're basically clueless about game preservation and what the mainframe/cloud model means for your basic rights.
The agenda is to turn PC into a more heavily drm'd locked down platform like mobile and control your software remotely.
Software as a service is literally a scam to invade your privacy, get you locked in and then jack up/extort you.
Look at all the DLC for SF V or Guilty Gear for instance. Huge amounts of cut content, sold back to you at ridiculously inflated prices.
Nothing like that existed in the 90's because there was no internet and analyticis to target stupid spendthrifts. Internet Analytics to target the spendthrift gamers has seriously fucked up gaming.
There are a LOT of modern games released with modding capabilities, just not most of triple A games, one I can actually think of is Skyrim which still has an active modding community. CSGO, Dota 2, StarCraft 2, Arma, is other examples.
When people say "golden age" how i understand it is that they feel like it was "better" experience playing the games then, and for me it means i enjoy playing games just as much now as i did when i was 15.
Sure, game preservation sucks, nothing I have given any thought. But that is not what I am talking about, I thought we were talking about the quality of games and how much people enjoy playing said games, not the state of the industry at large, privacy, DRM, and the future of gaming.
Dude the fact that the industry is stealing games and openly gloats it wants to make all games "services" (aka never give you a local application). Is the end goal.
So yeah, you need to know about the state of the industry to understand where game companies are taking us and it isn't for our benefit.
I do not want every new game to be an app controlled by googles cloud and thats exactly what the game industry wants. They want to move us all to the dumb terminal model of computing.
If you can't see that, you are blind. They openly talk about it on businss sites.
I feel in general that people are bad at keeping long friendships, and I seem very good at it (I don't know why). I have ~20 close friends that I speak to regularly that I have known for like 10 years. Many of those are people from the "golden days".
Have people that say they miss the "golden days" just not kept in touch with the friends they had at that time? Or have they just given up on gaming because everyone else they knew stopped playing?