"But they don't; even moderately competitive players can beat the best bots."
That's because the programmers are bad at AI for that kind of game. It just means human beings don't understand how to make a good AI for a game like starcraft. AKA the human being being the idiot that doesn't understand how to make one.
The problem with "proofs" is that software is often an iterative process because the environment and problems are constantly changing. If you have a fixed known problem you can do proofs to your hearts content, but in a changing environment you make the most of it with limited resources.
You don't have to proof everything. Eg just halting is good enough for a lot of things. (And this is not the general halting problem. Writing programs that provably halt is almost trivial.)
All old games have good things and bad things about them. The great things about old games were the challenge. The bad thing about them was that the industry was still learning and hence many games won't age well in terms of some dimension because many lessons had yet to be learned.
This is going to make me sound like a ranting old curmudgeon, but I am having a hard time thinking of much that's an improvement in modern games except for art style/graphical limitations.
There's not much innovation anymore. Modern AAA titles are rife with handholding, patronizing, unimaginative and focus-grouped-to-hell stories (because those sell the best), DLC bait, and other such tiresome tropes.
I remember the 90's being a time when there was a lot of innovation and experimentation because nobody had it down pat what would sell the best. You'd never see a Mister Mosquito[1] or a Vangers[2] or an Urban Assault[3] nowadays. You might see an indie homage or two, but that's totally different from having a large studio throwing resources at the wall and seeing what sticks.
It's a time I dearly miss. You want to know what the most memorable game in recent memory was to me? Undertale[4] . A retro-styled indie RPG with graphics that could probably have been pulled off 20 years ago on the SNES, but in spite of that limitation, its story and sound design is absolutely top shelf and is, in my mind, one of those games that everyone should play at least once.
Commercialism ruins everything. Sure, the usual response to this is "but there are more games than ever, and it's easier for anyone to jump in", which is true, but it still feels like as if there's some magic that was long since lost, only occasionally recaptured by a clever group of developers.
Here's the really cool bit: today we can have both. I get to play Chrono Trigger - a masterpiece of artfully taking a system to its limits - and I can play The Witness - a gorgeous game that would lose so much if it couldn't be rendered so well.
To me, the only hope is to have lots and lots and lots of games made. Whenever we wax philosophical about old games, no one ever mentions the absolute piles of junk that were made. And then some were good, but not great (compare Super Monkey Ball to Marble Madness) I loved Marble Madness as a little kid but couldn't really wrap my head around the controls, whereas SMB was fun right off the bat (and I was still terrible at it - but for actual gameplay reasons now).
Remember Roller Coaster Tycoon? The whole game felt rock solid and hand crafted. The 3D version added the ability to ride. But the world was so much less pretty. By contrast, look at the evolution of 3D in the Myst series; the game was supposed to be played like Uru, but computers could only handle HyperCard at the time. And contrast again with Into the Manhole, which really ought to be flash cards (or like flipping pages in a book - I remember the animations surprising and delighting me as a kid).
TL;DR: don't worry, it's not all bad. Some games need constraints, and people will build engines just for that. And some don't. But the important thing is: more games! (So more amazing ones trickle out).
If I wanted to give "old school" games a shot, which few should I try? I haven't played many -- Sonic as a kid, I watched FF7 and Symphony of the Night on youtube -- so I don't really have a good basis to judge from, but nothing I've seen obviously meets (let alone exceeds) the bar set by my favorite modern games, e.g.
Dark Souls / Bloodborne: Mechanics? (Haven't played)
Blood Dragon: 1980s simulator
I can identify the "commercialization" trend that you're talking about if and only if I focus my attention to a single franchise or a single aspect of a single franchise. Example: Mass Effect lost its hard SF edge in 2, 3 but the characters and mechanics got better. Starcraft lost its story and character edge in 2, but the mechanics got better. Bioshock lost its philosophical depth in Infinite but the story and characters got better.
Overlaid on top of this is a trend of increasing production value. Every franchise gives you some facet to point at and say "devs don't care about X, only production value, boo." This ignores the boring explanation that it's hard to churn out sequels that exceed the original in each and every possible point of comparison. Sequels need to be evaluated on their own merits and the industry needs to be judged as a whole. Otherwise everything is guaranteed to look like it's going downhill.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Let me know your favorites and I'll promise to give at least one a try.
Try playing Pillars of Eternity. It's a modern take on some of the old RPGs, by the guys who made the old classics.
Then there's Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate 2. Between those you have some of the best western RPGs ever made.
I find a lot of modern gaming to be incredibly shallow. Good for a single play session, but I put the game down and never return.
It's a bit of a shame really; these companies spend a fortune on fancy graphics and it just doesn't matter one bit to me. I'd rather play Dwarf Fortress in all its ASCII glory than play Destiny or The Division.
Baldur's Gate 2 is on my list of things to try, I'll add Pillars of Eternity. That said, I've got reservations:
> I find a lot of modern gaming to be incredibly shallow.
Sturgeon's Law.
> Good for a single play session but I put the game down and never return.
You seem awfully quick to ascribe this to game quality even though there are significant confounding factors: growing up and having more demands on your time, the opportunity cost of abundant digitally downloadable games, youtube's ability to let you explore alternative choices without spending many hours on a replay, etc.
Just so we're on the same page, though, have you played modern BioWare or CD Projekt Red titles? It's not uncommon for them to gate entire alternative chunks of the game behind player choices. 10x so with low-production-value assets. If someone can look at Witcher 3 and call it shallow and not replayable then I'm pretty sure that we're never going to see eye to eye on the subject of game quality.
> It's a bit of a shame really; these companies spend a fortune on fancy graphics and it just doesn't matter one bit to me.
That is a shame. Are you sure you're actually trying to appreciate the artwork, though? Being dismissive of graphics is certainly the "hip" position in most nerd circles I've been in -- something I became keenly aware of back when I was doing CG in academia and considering it as a career path. I can still picture the sneers on my friends' faces and hear their dismissive snorts when I would start to go on about the artistic accomplishments in this or that title. It sucked, although it wasn't what drove me away (the shit wages and working conditions did that on their own). There's nothing wrong with appreciating other facets of a game more than graphics, but if someone gives graphics 0 or negative weight then I tend to suspect they're primarily trying to build "nerd cred" rather than trying to enjoy games. Like the kid after a movie who can talk about nothing but loopholes.
> I'd rather play Dwarf Fortress in all its ASCII glory than play Destiny or The Division.
Are these unbiased samples or are you comparing your favorite from one era to a mediocre pick from another? How many of the games on my favorite list (addendum: I forgot Spec Ops: The Line) have you played and found wanting compared to your favorites from previous eras? In particular, would you apply the word "shallow" to any (in the facets I marked as strengths)?
I'm genuinely curious as to whether our difference of opinion is due to different tastes or having played different titles.
> That is a shame. Are you sure you're actually trying to appreciate the artwork, though?
Well, it depends on your point of view. Some people don't play games to appreciate the art at all. For some, the art is purely a functional part of the puzzle that allows for immersion (such as in my case).
For example, I recently started playing Dark Souls (which I'm head-over-heels for, by the way), and while the visuals could be described as "gorgeous", even at the low-res and detail I'm playing at to keep it responsive. But when I see amazing vistas in the game which include castles and bridges and turrets, those are places I actually get to visit in the game, and not through some weird warp, but by slowly working my way there, usually in a very circuitous route.
Are there games which advance the state-of-the-art with regard to graphics and art? Undoubtedly. Could I point them out to you? Not a chance. I don't have the prerequisite knowledge or experience to even notice in most cases, much less know where to begin in a task such as that. But I do appreciate that there is good art in the games, to the degree that it helps my immersion in the game. Sometimes that means lovingly crafted pixel art, sometimes it means detailed models and textures. It really depends on how it's integrated.
Well there are modern games that can consume whole days of my time. Crusader Kings 2, CS:GO, Cities: Skylines, Factorio, Pillars of Eternity etc. So I don't think it's about having less time to play.
My comment about the graphics was really about how a lot of these assets are only on screen for a few minutes. Some art team has spent days working on a boss character and I'm through it in 10 minutes or so. So much development time spent on such little effect, given that I really wouldn't have noticed the difference if they'd spent half the time. Whereas the games that really captivate me (like CK2 or Factorio) have relatively simple graphics, but really deep gameplay that keeps you coming back.
It's about priorities in development, I wish they spent more time on gameplay!
I've played almost all the games on your list, some of them are great (favs: Portal, Deus Ex, Dragon Age). I notice you didn't list Dragon Age 2, that game sums up a lot of my feelings about modern game development. I would also lump Mass Effect 2 in there for similar reasons. ME 1 was a great RPG with good gameplay mechanics, ME 2 was a beautiful looking cover based shooter (boring!) with mediocre RPG mechanics. That's what the game industry has come to, because it's far easier to churn out mediocre gameplay with fancy graphics than it is to actually make a truly great game.
But yes, some of them are still lacking. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are still fairly simplistic in gameplay compared to Baldurs Gate 2 (or the old Final Fantasies), and simplistic in story compared to Planescape. Bioshock was beautiful and had a great story, but System Shock 2 still had far better gameplay. Likewise with Deus Ex HR and Deus Ex 1.
Mirrors Edge is one of the few that truly stands out as having tried something exceptional with the gameplay, I've been dying for a sequel for a long time!
*
I guess you could sum up my point like so: Graphics are great when there's good gameplay underneath them. FF7 was both a beautiful game for its time and also had great gameplay. Likewise Chronotrigger, BG2, Deus Ex, Sim City, etc. But a game with great graphics and mediocre gameplay will forever be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI both have excellent stories and character development coupled with the best game soundtracks ever composed.
The Marathon trilogy starts off a bit slow, but it's got some great sci-fi writing (if you like sarcastic AIs that are constantly making opaque references to classical literature) and twitch action.
If twitch action is your thing though, it's hard to beat Descent and Descent II.
I'm currently playing through Planescape Torment, which is less like an RPG and more like an avant-garde fantasy novel.
If you look beyond the AAA games you can find a lot of great stuff. My favorite is Kerbal Space Program. It's fun, it's educational, it has personality, the challenge scales up with player skill to an almost unlimited degree and entirety organically, you can set your own goals or have them given to you... I could go on.
What really amazes me is looking at the players and seeing a lot of people going into aerospace careers because of it. And not only that, but finding that they have a huge leg up on their classmates because they've already learned so much from the game.
The magic is still there, you just have to find it.
Urban Assault, now there's a nostalgic flashback. I got hooked on the demo that came on the CD with one of the PC magazines, but never had the money to get the full game. They did a damn decent job trying to merge two very different genres and I'm really saddened by how few games since have done anywhere near as good a job.
"Let's be honest. Any mildly technical person knows that these kind of legal measures are technically impossible to enforce."
I'm sorry to tell you but you're wrong, videogame industry is a foretelling of where we'll be in years to come, stuff that is locked down on oneside of the internet and rented in perpetuity, that is the end game for our upper class.
Well considering what you've lost, I don't think you're really in a position to claim EFF is exaggerating considering the whole of copyright law has been corrupted and the industry has gotten its way every time over the last 200 years.
> This kind of empathy with others will make you much more effective when you're creating for people who are not like you.
Empathy has nothing to do with it, most people who use computers are stupid or if they are smart have irrational traits. Our ancient primate brain is easily fooled.
Apple's ipod was not technically superior to competing MP3 players. Steve jobs was not a genius, he was just taking advantage of the fact that people are stupid and into fashion.
The same thing applies for most things, take the videogame industry. Anyone who knows how a computer works and is not irrational knows DRM and locked down games are bad for games, the enlightened rational minority is outnumbered by the irrational majority. So corruption, appearances, crap products and the superficial rule.
This comment is very unempathetic. You're taking a very strong "if you don't agree with me you are stupid" approach, which is pretty much the exact opposite of empathy.
Also, most of the things that you've said are entirely subjective. You're stating your own opinions as fact, which most of us (me) would say is something a stupid, unempathetic person would do.
"but they were fine with using brutal violence against anyone who didn't accept their doctrine of nonviolence -- especially those from different cultures, and followers of different religions (or different Protestant denominations; they were particularly cruel towards the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish). This is why they get under my skin."
If you don't defend your culture you'll go extinct, the same way you don't want to be contaminated by outside ideas an ways of life that you worked hard to protect. Hypocrisy isn't quite the word I think you'd want to use. People get violent because they passionately want to protect something from what they deem as evil. They can be misguided in that sense but, ultimately they do have a point - those who do not defend themselves find commitments to their principles/ways of life and doctrines waning and their communities will suffer death by mixing and mediocrity.
Think of it like cultural entropy, they are trying to resist things that corrode their way of life.
I don't particularly mind when people exercise their right of collective self-defense (and for the sake of the argument, I'll grant that this is what the Quakers were doing); but I do mind when they deny that anyone has a right of collective self-defense, and then they turn around and exercise their own anyways. That's their hypocrisy: they preached pacifism, and used violence.
"I can't understand how people can still give governments the benefit of the doubt when they've been exposed as liars repeatedly for years."
Because reasoning doesn't work that way, and many people don't grow up in nice conditions. AKA the vast majority of people are poor and have hard lives, aka no time for research. You're on the internet, you are in the top percentage of wealthy people on the planet.
>You're on the internet, you are in the top percentage of wealthy people on the planet.
I don't really think that's true anymore. Especially with cheap smartphones or tablets, LTE towers and solar panels you can reach even rural africa.
"This statement is so naive that it blows me away. As toomuchtodo said, there's a huge difference between n car accidents per year, and the equivalent damage done by a terrorist attack,"
Unfortunatley from a mathematical standpoint you are incorrect, from an irrational human standpoint you have a point however.
The human mind is much worse at reasoning and reality than anticipated, how you and others perceive the world is not as real as you'd like to think, thats the whole point of math and science:
"So, my question, what is this feeling? How does the brain recognize that it should have this feeling?"
If we take the idea seriously that the universe is unified and all knowledge is unified, then it would be safe to treat the universe as a single entity. AKA everything is related to everything else in a whole host of mundane and non mundane ways that human beings are not aware of given the limits on the human brain/body and the time and energy required to process that information. AKA all the truth is there (the universes structure and its relationships). Rather our mind is busy highlighting things that are interesting, it's just the brain buildings models and finding interesting links unconsciously and when its done we get an update. AKA most thinking is done all the time unconsciously without our awareness of it. See the science:
That's because the programmers are bad at AI for that kind of game. It just means human beings don't understand how to make a good AI for a game like starcraft. AKA the human being being the idiot that doesn't understand how to make one.