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Comment by malthuswaswrong | Hacker News Reader

I have to occasionally remind myself that games have not become bad. I've gotten old. I can only imagine what it's like to be 12 and play Fortnight. They can republish Command and Conquer, but that feel will never be real again.

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Games have become less experimental and more streamlined in a chosen genre. Take Sc2: it has three games in it: arcade space combat, arcade planet exploration, and an adventure plot. Current gamemakers shy from such experimenting, and the resulting products are far less diverse, especially among big budget titles (too much risks, understandable, but still).

There's an explosion of creativity in the indie and open source space, this might be a survivor bias as we're only still talking about the games from the past that stayed in the public consciousness

they still mostly fall into the lines of established genres. Where are my Strategy/Adventure hybrids like great Dune 1? [1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(video_game)

Was Factorio an established genre?

What about binding of Isaac?

I've heard that noitka is pretty blendy

Minecraft launched a new genre

Auto chess is a new genre that came out recently

Factorio - minecraft on steroids

Binding of Isaak - action shooter

others I haven't seen. But I'm talking of different thing. What is absent in modern game are the attempts of synthesis of different genres, which were frequent in 80s or 90s, and gave us such gems as Dune 1 and Star Control 2.

Binding of isaac is arguably an action RPG mixed with rougelike, both were developed genres before it was made, it was a synthesis of both. It helped launch the rougelite genre/achetype.

Indie games is where it's at. There is so much interesting original content out there, you just have to find it.

Like Fallout 2? Check Atom RPG and Wasteland.

Like classic RPGs of 2000s? Check basically the entire 'Spiderweb Software' catalog.

Like Xcom? Check out Mutant: Year Zero

Metroidvania? There's a bunch (played Blasphemous recently, pretty good)

Zombies? Project zomboid

Pokemon? Monster Sanctuary

Lore you have to discover? Kenshi, Vagrus

Weird? Let's get weird: Library of Ruina

Isn't it a little odd to demonstrate the originality of indie games by explicitly equating them to a popular title?

"Original content", not "originality". The contrast here is not being derivative per se, but vs. AAA gaming and its increasing convergence on being pretty much the same game over and over with superficial surface changes.

Indie doesn't mean unpopular :)

But to expand, Fallout 3 was nothing like Fallout 2 and neither was Fallout 4. We'll probably never get another Fallout title like F2, but we'll get indie games like it.

Same with pokemon, the last few (almost every?) pokemon game has essentially the same story, but Monster Sanctuary actually brings a new story to the table in a way Nintendo never will.

The established formulas are less innovative, but those are they are inherently the most fun. A lot of indie games have fascinating visual and some unique mechanics but suffer from the core of the gameplay being a lot less fun.

I feel like the Sierra ___ Quest games were like that too, multi-faceted. There were so many mini-games that would've made cute little releases on their own, but they served as tasks or plot points within the main story.

I also suspect that if someone were to do that today, reviewers would pan it for distracting from the main game or whatever. It's a different market, and more's the pity.

I've tried some games on Steam like Crying Suns or Bad North. There's something that makes them feel so mechanical. Sure, they might have great, stylized graphics and nice dialogue in places. But it feels like somebody took Star Control 2 or some other earlier games, simplified some aspect to a formula and then someone took the formula and made a game based on that, not having played the original.

For example, in Crying Suns there are three kind of fighters you can deploy. A kills B, B kills C, C kills A. Does everything always boil down into this? It's just not fun. It's a lazy gaming trope.

In Bad North, every map is procedurally generated. It just gets old after the first few ones.

Not to dispute your main point, but I recently got hold of the remastered C&C. I'd forgotten how good it was. The music really drives a lot of the feeling in it.

Having said that, I just don't have the time to really get into it again. And I don't have my best friend living in the same house with Ethernet cables strung between the rooms ;)

> And I don't have my best friend living in the same house with Ethernet cables strung between the rooms ;)

Can't you just connect 2 remote virtual machines with an EthernetOverIP channel and bring up IPX to play old games?

Only worth doing if my project to create an AI simulation of my best friend also succeeds ;)

One thing about the original c&c. Even the installer was interesting. Pity they stripped that out when they ported it to windows and used installshield later. You were having fun the second you started that game.

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