Putting aside joke distractions like Wii-mote and Kinect, which are only suitable for party games not accurate gaming by people who want to become expertly skilful.

If you go right back to the early days of gaming, and this means very early C64 games and much earler like late 70s-early 80s, there are some really weird ideas or games that had the technology graphically enabled them, would have been really surreal.

Now, more and more, games get more realistic BUT the ideas are like Ian Flemming's wet dream and the game world/physics something even more realistic!

I think the real problem will come even later, fast forward 10 years when the childhood experience of gaming for the younger programmers of that generation have been weaned on the boring shitfest that is Nintendo or Playstation or PC FPS/Sim gaming. These people will NEVER think outside the box really.

Games should be about experiences and environments we will never experience in reality. I think ALL kids should be forced to play some obscure and weird games to give them a balanced view of game design.

Sure a PS3/360/2gb GPUd PC can graphically piss all over a VIC-20 BUT I guarantee you there are more "fun" games to be found on the VIC-20 that just make you grin than on those machines. The gameplay may not last days but it will still be fun as I found uploading about 400 VIC-20 gameplay videos last year.

I only owned a VIC for 3 months and only had about 5 games for it, played maybe another 10 on my cousin's VIC so it's not nostalgia like when I load up say Punchy on the C64 which I played as a kid.

I feel sorry for the future sometimes, the only original thing I've seen all year in this multi billion dollar industry worldwide is a twee little PSN game with what looks like those arabic dancers in fez's with victorian shape dresses floating about a dessert. ONE GAME!

I don't think the problem is us, even little flash games are based on the same old arcade games from the mid 80s onwards.

I think your initial premise is wrong. Kinect and Wii, given time, will bring new gameplay experiences. Look at how rapidly touchscreen gaming has taken hold.
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Completely agree with merman, you've written off whole systems and the evolution that's already happening just because you don't like it yourself. There are some incredible Wii games out there that are simply divine and have superb controls. You can't write it off because of some of the shovelware out there, the 64 had crap games too.

Touch screen, which was brought to the fore with the DS, and motion control, brought to the fore by the Wii, are evolving greatly with some of the bigger games I have on my iPad showing where things could go. And that's just one example of many. Ofcourse there's lots of crap just like any popular platform, and a lot of very good small puzzle games, but there's great big complex and brilliantly-controlled games if you know what to look for.

There are younger people I know that reminisce about the 16 and 32 bit days just as we do about the 64. Every generation will do the same and will grow up thinking "games aren't what they used to be", because they'll always be changing with technology and they'll have grown up with something different.

And as a splash of reality, there was a LOT of crap back in the day as well. A LOT.

Are more games not purchased via android and IOS markets now?

Even the disappointing 3DS sales were down to these. Half of all on-line games played are via Facebook.

Gaming is evolving, I doubt we will see future home console gaming be as big as it currently is. Even they are evolving with apps like Love Film and NetFlix on them.
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as long as i get a box and nice artwork im still happy
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Couple of things really....

The way gaming has evolved over the past 10 years or so is largely down to the generation of 80's gamers. I agree to some extent that some of the originality has gone, which is largely down to the the corporate environs games designers now work in - why make one great game when you can make one great game and numerous mediocre sequels / clones which will sell in large numbers?

I feel the Indie movement is the solution here. It has taken a long time, but there does appear to be a growing Indie market, I suspect largely inspired by Minecraft's success.

In terms of technology, Anything that brings greater accessibility and attracts a broader group of people has to be a positive thing. Microsoft in particular did miss a trick with kinect however, it had the potential to open up a whole world of gaming for disabled people, but if you are in a wheelchair, kinect simply doesn't work. As these kinds of technology improve I think the creativity will increase as developers learn to take full advantage of this amazing hardware with original and creative ideas.
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If you look at ratios the modern consoles are probably better in terms of good games to crap.

C64, lets say there are 15,000 games. Choose your top 50. That is about 0.003% of the games.

Wii, lets say there are 5000 games (probably much less than this), a top 50 is 0.01%. That is about 33:1 ratio of top 50 to the available pool.

Granted the top 50 is subjective. You might not even find 50 Wii games you like. But look at it another way. For every 1 Wii game you like, there has to be 33 C64 games you like to keep a 1:1 ratio of stinkers v good games.

And if you say there is not a single Wii game you would like, then I think it is you that has to reconsider your appraisal of games, rather than the owners of the ~95.5 million Wii owners!

I think it's inevitable that gamers will always hold the games they played in their formative years with the most reverence.

I grew up on the C64 and Amiga in my early-mid teens and, for me, that will always be the pinnacle of my gaming lifetime.

But that doesn't mean that there can't be recognition of the fact that there haven't been top-tier games produced on other platforms since that period. The last 4 or 5 years I haven't been keeping up for the most part, but I know that some PS2 games were among the best I've ever played, Shadow of the Colossus and Resident Evil 4. Hell, I'd put Angry Birds among the top 50 games I've ever played.

I do understand the original post, that back then there was more room, and a bigger marketplace for, experimentation and weirdness, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. It looks to me like the majority of today's console games are cut from the same cloth, but I qualify that by saying I haven't played hardly any of them.

I love gaming today. Steam and other digital distribution channels means there's tons of innovative, unique games out there for those who know where to look. Gaming has been a major part in my life for three decades now, and I'm still having as much fun as ever.

I mean, we even get brand new C64 games that are better than most of the stuff we got during the eighties. So what's not to like?

If you want innovation and experimentation, consoles aren't the place to look as that requires a large outlay of cash and man power to get published there so taking chances isn't something that's likely to happen. Although you do get some exceptions like Braid, Flower and a few others.

The indie scene on the PC is where developers are free to experiment these days which is basically like it was back on the C=64. Anyone can download a compiler and start putting a PC game together.

Having said that, I think we're in a golden age of video gaming right now. There are SO many really good games out there. My backlog is immense and I know I'll never have time to play them all. And more are coming out all the time!

As for the thread title, no, they won't. Because you'll never be a kid seeing games for the first time ever again.

I grew up in the 80s and early 90s so for me those kind of games will be what i want to play. while i find the modern touchgames fun for a short while and the fps games fun for some minutes - it isn't my thing. just as my generation of games isn't much for the fps-geeks of today. while i feel everything is the same today (fps), it wasn't that much better when every game was a platform game. nor when every game was a space game in the early 80s.
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Some very good points in this thread. As many of you here I grew up with the c64, Vic and amiga. Ask someone a few years younger and it was the snes/genesis(mega drive) that rocked their world. A few years younger still and it was the playstation. I think we are all nostalgic about our formative years, which include a lot of great video gaming memories.
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Check out the current offers on Steam. Plenty of indie titles, many of which contain new and interesting gameplay ideas.

Problem isn't that the games today are bad, it's the fact that people only see the big AAA titles and don't realize there's a very big, very good indie scene going on. Heck, some of the best games out there are free!
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Back in the day being able to make things move around on your TV was a great novelty on its own, Remember that when comparing to so called gimmicks.

"Maybe games will never be the same again?"

They will always be the same because there's no great variation on basic theory.

Reaction, tactics, strategy is pretty much it.

Katakis is no different to Spy Hunter, Draughts no different to Infection, Chess no different to Defender of the Crown.

The novelty rests with design. Immerse the player in a new experience and it doesn't matter that they're performing the same old moves.

The Wii and Kinect are fantastic, bringing a new experience to the same old games.

[quote="jt-3d"]

ZenEmu wrote:

No, see you are looking through your own perspective and assumptions. I was well past my formative years when I first met the C=64. I laughed at the yuppies who thought they needed their own computer. But the wife bought me a C=64 so I wouldn't hang out and play video games after work. It wasn't a Christmas present from my mommy and daddy or Santa Claus. I bought it with my own money. And I bought my kids every nintendo system they made. And I played them all and they were ass compared to the 64. OK, Starfox on the SNES was pretty cool but still... And I watched the stupid consoles take over from C=64 and other computers and wondered why. But I also knew why. The idiots were too lazy to type LOAD"*",8,1 and preferred to just plug in a cart, despite the fact that most of the time they had to take the damn thing out and blow on it before it would work. ahhhh, don't get me started. Get off my lawn. grumblegrumble

Indeed, my uncle and step father were in their mid twenties when they got into commodore machines. But honestly I would say people like my uncle and yourself would be very much in the minority, but yes perhaps I am looking at it through my own perspective. Having said that, I wonder how many people on Lemon are between the ages of 35-45. I would guess most of them.
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Zen