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Hello again, friends! I was without internet for a bit and busy with research, so I sorta dropped out for a bit. But now, back!

http://gamerant.com/13-gaming-trends-disap...n-159000/all/1/

A neat article I came across. Several of these things have been discussed in their own topics here on the forum, like physical retail stores or physical game discs. Some of them are quite simply, yet still interesting to consider: corded controllers, for example, or memory cards.

Many are very interesting, though. These include:
Survival Horror games;
World War II games;
3D gaming;
Escort missions;
and Splitscreen multiplayer (we already saw multiplayer bots disappear last generation).

I can't speak too much to Survival Horror games, as I was never a big player, but it was amazing to me that I hadn't realized the sudden disappearance of WWII games, once a staple of the shooter genre. Perhaps as a culture we are 'over' WWII? Or perhaps with heightened realism in graphics companies can portray more modernized warfare, and thus don't feel inclined to turn back the clock?

3D gaming is a fascinating one; something I never got started in, and now apparently won't have the chance to even if I want.

Escort missions was another one that surprised me. It seemed like every shooter campaign had one, and as annoying as they could be, in the better iterations the escort mission was an excellent and in some ways true-to-life mix-up from the usual mission objectives. The writer admits it isn't exactly dead-dead, but the state of the escort mission certainly isn't what it was.

I remember when I first realized bots weren't really a thing anymore. There were console attached to the internet, by some magic, and the bottom line was that I couldn't count on being able to set up a match of me vs. a team of 6 bots all on hard difficulty to practice anymore. To practice, of course, for when the friends came over to play splitscreen. AND THEN THEY TOOK THAT AWAY TOO. Yes, you don't have to deal with that bastard friend everyone has who constantly is watching your screen and then, after killing you all too easily from behind, immediately shouts "I wasn't screenpeeking!" But wow, it is something that's changing. And while there are still of course plenty of splitscreens, it's undeniable that this feature gets less use that it once did.

Thoughts? Contradictions?

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Quote (Death Penalty @ 21st July 2013 04:13)

Perhaps as a culture we are 'over' WWII?

Definately not. I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of politicians or politically motivated people on the TV in this country constantly invoking that era in an idealistic, revisionist manner to create the illusion that Britain has more social cohesion than it does.
It may be the same with other countries but the narrative this island spins of itself does not reflect its present reality!

...but you're talking about games. I think with the WW2 shooters that it was simply a case of saturation last generation. There were so many ww2 shooters coming out in a short time, no matter how innovative the early Medal of Honor and Call of Duty titles were, that publishers moved onto other eras/themes. A very simple explanation, I know, but no one wants to play the same thing repeatedly and no one wants to develop it either (Fifa/Madden notwithstanding).
Maybe there's a case for saying sci-fi FPS have a broader appeal as they're not based on real wars that had real winners and losers, in terms of nations you're marketing to.

Many Survival Horror enthusiasts claim that the ps1-2 generations had a "golden age" of survival horror, that was largely thanks to technological limitations forcing developers to get creative. I'm on the fence about that. There have been some survival horror games out this generation though, the PC has shined in that respect with Amnesia: The Dark Descent and other indie titles, but Amnesia is the only one i've played.

Multiplayer splitscreen should come back, offline competition is usually a lot more fun, personally I like having the choice of both. The last CoD I played was Black Ops and that has both splitscreen and bots, they were definately used by a lot of players, I remember seeing people using bots in youtube videos to demonstrage particular tricks or techniques such as quick-scoping.

Screw 3D gaming.

Edit: That article is annoying in that it makes some pretty bold claims with only mainstream titles as evidence.. I don't agree with escort missions being dead, moral clarity being dead or offline distribution being dead (yet)

This post has been edited by Blinge Odonata on 21st July 2013 10:05

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The thought of Escort Missions disappearing confuses me when you look at The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, even The Walking Dead by Telltale. I think that one is a bit of a reach. The author tries to make the claim that those are escort-mission games, but he can't use Ico as an example to make his point and then try to say that.

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I agree that things like moral clarity and wires are disappearing, but escorts? Survival Horror? WWII? Game Chat? Maybe it's 'cause I don't play much anymore, but to me, I was really surprised that he made such claims.

WWII is easy to figure out. No one sympathizes with Nazis. Whatever complex socio-political situation revolving around Nazi Germany has loong since been replaced with a cartoon in our pop culture, so you could make a 'shoot whatever moves' videogame revolving around the slaughter of hundreds of digital human analogues based on something that actually did happen in real life and not many people were going to get their feathers ruffled. The reason it died was simply because Modern Warfare proved we could trivialize our current geopolitical scenarios with no (monetary) repercussions and our modern military has a lot more toys to play with.

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So basically, it's like a more realistic equivalent of zombies -- easy target (no pun intended) to make a shooting game about.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 22nd July 2013 13:39

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Cool article, I agree with a lot of stuff on that list. I think the escort missions would be a lot easier to accept if he just said "true" escort missions where your partner can actually die, and you have to protect her or him. I think most new games have escorts who are invincible (see Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us, blah and blah). But to agree with people here, as a trend I really don't think it's gone. Just because there's not a clear example of a weak escort character doesn't mean there won't be one soon.

Survival Horror has definitely moved on I think. Nowadays it's either horror or survival. Unless "horror" is defined as a list of enemies or locations rather than being scared; so for examples post-apocalpyse, zombies, and so on count as horror even if it's not scary. This would be fine for me to accept. Right now I think it's Survival like Last of Us (cringe), DayZ, Dead Island etc, and Horror in Amnesia, Slender, Bioshock and so on. Back in the day Survival games would be scarier with loads of frightening set pieces and so on, and Horror would incorporate a lot of survivalist elements that aren't there anymore; this basically means more exhaustible mechanics like health, saving (ink ribbons), and guns with little ammo. I know Amnesia is very close to this but without guns it definitely isn't what I would call a survival horror. But that's just me.

I don't think zombies have replaced WW2 shooters, they've filled some other gap though certainly. Modern day or near-future contexts have replaced WW2 I think. Mostly, I'm guessing, because WW2 was exhausted. Think about it, you've only got 4 or less years of locations and battles (5 minutes if you're American) and Hitler has already been part of the occult as early as Doom if I remember correctly. Nazi Zombies has been effectively established. There's no more room for innovation. The problem, I'm guessing, was always that modern day conflicts were very difficult to replicate well in games because it's all done with spy satellites and targetted bombing. Arcade-style shooters has been out of fashion for a while. But with Cod they managed to make a pretty great game that set the benchmark of a modern shooter, and everyone followed because it was mainstream, popular, new and exciting. WW2 now would be like "pssch, grandad, please ".

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Amnesia forces you to survive on your wits and limited items that stop you dying or help you - IE health and limited lamp oil and tinderboxes. The Penumbra series by the same developer doesn't have guns either, they're definitely all survival horror. I hope your opinion isn't based mainly in the fact that Resident Evil had guns?

Doom is Sci-fi, maybe you're thinking of one of the added episodes for Wolfenstein 3D? That established Nazi Zombies.

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The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

Quote (Blinge Odonata @ 23rd July 2013 18:11)

Amnesia forces you to survive on your wits and limited items that stop you dying or help you - IE health and limited lamp oil and tinderboxes. The Penumbra series by the same developer doesn't have guns either, they're definitely all survival horror. I hope your opinion isn't based mainly in the fact that Resident Evil had guns?

Actually it is. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame. Eternal Darkness (arguably survival horror), Condemned, Parasite Eve, and all the Alone in the Dark games had combat as a big feature. Like I said, that's just my reception of survival horror. Without combat I'd just put it down as horror. It's all semantic but genres, to me, don't have to actually fit the title, regardless of survival mechanics in Amnesia. So a classic survival horror game needs an unreliable combat system; it's what originally set it apart from classic action adventure, or whatever you want to call it, why Doom 3 isn't survival horror, and it's why Resident Evil 4 was such a huge step away from 1-3.

But overall genres are just what people make of them, so if you say Amnesia is a survival horror I have no complaints.

Yeah I didn't remember Doom correctly! Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D is what I meant.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.