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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> I feel like we are in a golden age of PC gaming right now.

Not really. Its golden Age was in the late 80s, early 90s, where games were still made by educated people FOR educated people, before the whole thing went mainstream and any sign of complexity went progressively down the drain so that Everyone could start playing games. I miss Falcon's 300 pages manual, or even Colonization's fantastic booklet that went far above describing how to just play the game.

The early 90s were dominated by AAA titles from Origin, pushing both the boundaries of what was technically possible on PC as well as driving genres forward by developing non-linear game structures and exploring 3D environments. Nowadays AAA blockbusters jsut rehash the same formula over and over again (care to take another Assassin's Creed?).

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This is a perfectly valid opinion and seems to be downvoted because of disagreement. (albeit you could have clearly stated it's your opinion).

I kind of agree. A lot of AAA games these days are just unoriginal. They follow the genre they exist in without much creativity or original ideas. Perhaps the storyline in the game is what people are after these days, but gameplay-wise, I don't remember when I've seen a big production game that I would have wanted to play.

Not to underestimate the value of nostalgia, of course. Some of the old games have not stood up to the test of time. E.g. I played the original Dungeon Keeper recently and I was a bit underwhelmed because I remember when I played that game when it was new and how great it felt.

Good thing that there are still interesting indie games. Even 15-20 years ago when I played more games, I spent more time playing small indie titles I found from BBS'es and computer magazines than I did playing big titles.

> Some of the old games have not stood up to the test of time. E.g. I played the original Dungeon Keeper recently and I was a bit underwhelmed because I remember when I played that game when it was new and how great it felt.

Certainly, but the opposite is also true. Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape Torment still hold up very well to this day and shame more recent RPGs lacking good stories and good character development, aimed at folks who liked RPGs on pen and paper and who actually liked RPGs before they existed on computers.

Indies are great, but there's a certain lack of ambition and a lot of rehashing there too (shovel knight reproducing 8 bit games, others using pixel art as a form of style instead of using all pixels available on screen to do something gorgeous, many reboots of ancient IPs, etc...). Truly original, innovative games are few because most of the genres have already been established for a long time.

Colonization 1994 manual (135 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.8194

Colonization 2008 manual (38 pages): http://replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.377

Edit: fixed duplicate link, thanks ekianjo.

You just posted the same links I think.

Np! Otherwise good find, which proves my above point. The first 1994 booklet had a whole essay on the History of the colonization of America, I used to read it several times after playing the game. But this was not just this game, so many others went ahead to provide tons of value besides the game itself (Ultima 7's map printed on a cloth! A classic!). This was just so much more than mere tutorials. They also help create the atmosphere of the game OUTSIDE of the game.

I still have the Ultima 7 map, apart from being beautiful it was fairly useful since it really helped you navigate the world.

The booklets also helped the immersion, things really have changed.

I have played Colonization for countless hours and yet had never seen the manual, thank you very much for pointing it out!

Incidentally, for many years, everything I "knew" about the colonial & revolutionary times in the US, I had learned from Colonization and Day of the Tentacle :)

It's hard to make the case for the early 90s being the peak of game quality, use Origin as an example, and completely miss out a reference to Roberts Space Industries and Star Citizen.

The golden age is in the future, and the future is already here (just not evenly distributed).

We'll see if Star Citizen is as good as it promises to be, but until then, the height of Roberts' creative career is in the early 90s for now, before he went into movies with his disastrous Wing Commander film. Plus, he is just directing Star Citizen and not involved in development as he was during the Wing Commander series (where he was a programmer himself at least for the first 2 episodes).

Ah... a couple nitpicks there. First, Roberts did almost all of the initial Star Citizen pitch prototype development himself, with some assistance from CryTek employees. While most of his current time is more on the vision/direction side, I've read a number of discussion posts indicating he's still hands-on in the code when he gets a chance.

Also, he's VERY involved in the design aspects. CIG recently published a breakdown of their ship design and development process. There's three or four major stages, and every one has "approval from Chris Roberts" as a gate at the end.

So, while he's certainly not writing a majority of the code like he might have in the past, I'd definitely disagree with the phrase "not involved in development".

Good points - I had the impression Roberts was not involved in direct development anymore, that is reassuring for Star Citizen I guess.

I think you're looking at a pretty narrow genre (Complex Games) and extrapolating the entire platform's content/potential from it. There are fewer people making as complex games as back then, but saying people are uneducated is a bit silly.

While his example of the flight sim might be an extreme, I'd agree that many genres have been oversimplified. One incredibly disappointing example that comes to mind is the X-Com series.

I'm not saying people are uneducated, I'm saying most games are made nowadays for the mainstream and I don't think you can argue gamers back in the mid-80s were more likely to be more of the college types of folks who happened to be early adopters in the days. Nowadays even 10 years old play on PC and that completely skews what games you make for that market.

I don't think there were many games that matched the complexity of Paradox's grand strategy games in the early 90's, but I'm curious to hear of any examples.

I agree with you, but simulation games were a whole genre back in the early 90s. It has almost completely disappeared. Remember Microprose? Remember Maxis ? Remember Did ? Bullfrog ? They were all huge businesses dedicated to educated/curious gamers back then. Paradox falls into the indies - they clearly do not have much means (while they make great games).

I don't think Paradox really qualify as indie anymore. They're more on a niche market than anything else.

Paradox has transitioned into being a niche publisher, particularly since merging with Slitherine. Also, DiD was, I believe, making simulation software for the RAF.

I do really miss Microprose and Bullfrog. As a wargammer, I would add SSI, SSG, and Three-Sixty to that list as well.

SSI and SSG, good call, I forgot to mention them.

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