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[DarthHelmet86]

What extra playstyles in LSL or MI, both were pretty straight forward Adventure games. Larry had a stupid casino part that was pretty much there to force people to read the manual to learn how to play the games and to save scum so they could get enough money.

I could list popular games now that have secrets and specials, even trophies by themselves can add more to a game. Teach you something new about a game. Once again how many of you are actually playing these games or just running on the stories you hear from others. The market is huge, with a large amount of games in it have you played them all to know they no longer do these things? Or are we once again only paying attention to the AAA mega super duper game and ignoring all the rest?

[Scatty]

Of course I didn't mean to say there are no really good games out still made today. There would be enough of those, though I don't keep that close attention at them lately, I got to admit that. I do look once and again at what's the newest "big thing" like once in a year, though.
The thing is, can you compare today's diversity of what's available with the huge diversity of what's been available during the 90's? There's always been trash, and among it also good games, that didn't change all that much. However I don't exactly remember a serial production of the same line of game title(s) over and over again, as you can see some of them now, being widely practiced earlier. Today, it seems to be a clear treand. Wouldn't that naturally show a certain decline of imagination? Of course there're other factors too, as in more conservative planning with the available budget and higher restrictions and/or rushing of the publishers who oversee a production of a game, but they've also been there earlier.

[DarthHelmet86]

What about all the games that ripped off Doom or all the cheap crappy platformers that just did that same thing over and over with little changed between them?

I would say the market is more conservative now, because of us. We are more critical and have a way to express our distaste in a game to a wide market. This wasn't the same in the 90's (though it was starting). If you push out a game that is unique and tries really hard but still is not fun or is flawed in some way it will be railed about on the internet in moments. And people wont have to buy it or know someone who bought it to know this.So if you are going to drop a large chunk of money on something it makes sense to make sure you know there is a market out there for it. But since you are sure you can make that money back you can then risk a bit of money on something else that you aren't sure of.

We also expect more, look at stories in games they used to be really basic and formulaic, we as gamers demanded more. Now they have to pay much more money to writers to get a good story, more money they might never get back. Even still games get made that the company is unsure of, Red Dead Redemption was slated to never make any money, it was a project of love by Rockstar...and it showed and people spent a lot of money buying it.

[TotalAnarchy]

Suffice to say, even the FPS genre isn't all about copycats. I mean the new Call of Duties have been ripped-off only by a few games, like Medal of Honor (the new one) and Battlefield 3, the Single-Player component. Most other FPSs have followed their own design. For example the difference between RAGE and Call of Duty: Black Ops, is like heaven and earth. The first one is all about gadgetry, racing and switching weapons to better suit your needs; the second one is just a shoot-kill-advance and watch the fireworks affair.

There are countless FPSs that have tried to improve the mechanics, add something new, like Timeshift, Singularity, Half-Life 2 etc. In fact I must say that Activision and Call of Duty do not reflect the situation of the industry well, as there are less FPSs done now. A lot of people when discussing the bastardization of the gaming industry bring Fallout 3 and New Vegas as examples that follow the COD model, but let's not forget that (1) they're RPGs (2) Bethesda has been doing First-Person RPGs since the very beginning.

[hunvagy]

http://www.dorkly.com/video/30941/do...too-mainstream

That guy.. explained.