golden age

[Sgt.Pepper1983]

I've noticed some disagreement on what is considered to be the golden age of gaming. A lot of people I've talked to consider it to be what ever era they cared the most about keeping up with what was new in gaming. That's why I don't think there is a real golden age of gaming. So I was wondering how some of you define the golden age of gaming.

[108 Stars]

Well, I understand what was explained to me about the term in the other thread and accept that; a time when stuff is new, basic, original and innocent, the pioneer days.

 

Personally I believe that it would be a fair alternative to call an era golden that brought major improvements in quality, variety and public awareness.

 

In this way, I think that the great times for gaming did not start before the NES/SMS/C64.

When I switch on my 2600, I do it for nostalgic reasony only; honestly, I can find little to no entertainment in these old simplistic games anymore.

And yeah, I did grow up with the Atari 2600 years before I knew more advanced systems, eventhough the system was past it´s prime already.

Games like Space Invaders or Donkey Kong or Pac-Man are very easy to understand, and that is what´s good about them; yet there is little to achieve. Donkey Kong has 4 or 5 screens, and they repeat all over; Space Invaders and Pac-Man always look the same, there is nothing new coming but more difficult challenges. And that was the standard of the times back then.

 

Then came the new era, where the goal to just get better and hone your skills was more and more replaced by the sense of adventure; people stopped caring about highscores as a primary objective. These new games that NES/SMS/C64 brought us were full of surprises; more varied/complex gameplay and new worlds to expore. You did not repeat the same level with increased speed all over again, but aimed to reach a new level with new challenges, new graphics, new enemies. You wanted to see what comes next, save the princess and see the ending.

 

This change in gaming was, imho, the best and most important conceptual novelty ever, and its effect has been steadily growing to this day.

I so much prefer to learn to know the bosses of Mega Man or Contra with their unique tactics and looks, the many different, colorful worlds of Mario and Sonic from just moving a spaceship from left to right all the time, with nothing ever changing, or from moving Pac-Man through dozens and dozens of characterless, similar looking mazes.

 

This was what made gaming a much more popular mass phenomenon than it was before the crash... the chance to experience adventures, more or less like movies, on the screen instead of training reflexes just for the score.

 

Of course, many people began to dislike this later on, as games became less and less challenging and more of a movie, especially with the advent of CD-ROM-based systems. But the time that trend began was after the crash, and throughout the lifecycle of NES, SMS, PCE, Genesis and SNES.

 

So yeah, I think MY golden age in the way of games just getting a quality boost began in the mid 80ies and lasted a decade. Mind you, I am a modern gamer, and I prefer my PS2 to any 8- or 16bit machine; so no talking about the good old days from me. But eventhough for my taste the quality has kept improving constantly and by far surpassed that of "my" golden age, it was an evolutionary improvement, not a revolution like the one after the crash.

 

Phew, it´s hard to explain something like this in a foreign language, without offending anyone; so I apologize if any Atari 2600-era-fan feels offended, it was not meant that way, I was just trying to explain my honest feelings about the most important time in gaming for me.

[darthkur]

"A Golden Age refers to a time in a specific culture, where cultural advancements and enlightenments are at their highest point. For example, many refer to the Golden Age of Classical Greece as a time in the 5th century BCE when literature, drama, philosophy, art and politics were most inspired. A Golden Age is often followed by a decline, where new cultural products are derivative and less inspired and where politics begin to veer off from their initial course. Thus a Golden Age if it could be graphed, would be the high point, the top of the bell on a bell curve, or the apex of a society.............Often a Golden Age is ascribed to a period in time where one can observe a definite low point prior to and after the age. Thus it is frequently premature to call a new event a Golden Age, since without being able to foretell the future, we are not able to view its decline. Therefore, generally the term Golden Age relates to things past, and should not be applied to present events or cultural developments."*

 

 

*Taken from: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-golden-age.htm

 

 

I think the line "A Golden Age is often followed by a decline, where new cultural products are derivative and less inspired" says it all. Video games, since their inception to the time of "the crash" were truly inspired. In other words, they were created from nothing since there was not anything from which to copy. Since then much else else has been "derivative and less inspired". Note that I did not say "everything" but "much". Personally I feel that today's games and systems are more of a low point from a true gaming perspective since it seems that 99% of the "games" are more akin to movies than anything. Instead of picking up a controller and having some fun you need to read a novel sized instruction manual, remember a mind numbing amount of button combination's and sit through enough "cutscenes" to equal an epic saga. And after one does finally get through everything there's no desire to ever do it again. So games are now disposable. Maybe I'm just old and stuck in the past but it's just doesn't appeal to me very much.

[108 Stars]

Nice thing is that that explanation works for us both if you pick the right part of it.

 

"A Golden Age refers to a time in a specific culture, where cultural advancements and enlightenments are at their highest point.

 

This would speak for my version; this specific culture is the videogaming culture, and so it must not be born in the golden age to begin with, but offer "advancements" at their highest point. You could also say that the decline was the 16bit age, which consisted mostly of polished updates of the 8bit era.

 

 

About pick-up-and-play-fun...do you think that is desirable? I mean, there is still tons of simplistic games out there, yet you still have to memorize more than one button. Should it really get even simpler? Have those games not been long made and the possibility for more such extremely simple concepts is very limited?

 

I am not so sure as to how much potential there still is for addictive games that simple. The more you limit the gameplay to stay simple, the fewer the possibilities get.

 

Personally, and I am probably the exact opposite of you, I have the problem with pick-up-and-play-games that I put them away after 15 minutes, and never feel the urge to play them again.

Now, a movieresque game with cutscenes, drama and al is what really makes me wanna play; experiencing an epic saga first hand and entering virtual worlds is the whole point in video games to me. That´s what you need them for; if you just wanna have a quick play you could as well play cards, or dart, or flipper...whatever. The virtual world that draws you in is what only this medium can give you, and what makes it different from just being a gimmick, electronically copying classic games. Unlike mov ies or novels you are not the bystander and viewer of the action, but you are a part of it yourself. No game I ever played, from RPGs to simulations ever required me to read the manual either; the game even teaches you as you play, unlike old games just throwing you into the action clueless. And even a game using 8 buttons can be highly intuitive.

 

In the end, it is all about what someone expects from a videogame. My expectations are of the kind that cannot be replaced by something else.

 

I love these kind of topics, and it is great that AtariAge has a mature audience to talk to about stuff like this.

Edited June 12, 2009 by 108 Stars

[Sgt.Pepper1983]

I've already mentioned in another post that my favorite pick up and play game is the arcade version of Donkey Kong. For some reason no matter how many times I play it, no matter how high I get my score, I just dont ever get bored of it. My high score is somewhere just over 50,000. I do think that the era when Donkey Kong was made can be called the golden age of arcade gaming because it is easier to point to a certain era of arcade games and say that they are the best than it is to do with a certain era of games in general. I've already mentioned that my golden age is from 1991-1996 and that 1993 is what I consider to be the absolute peak of that period. My favorite game from my golden age is a toss up between Megaman X and Starfox. My favorite epic type game though is Final Fantasy 9. But whether you're talking about pick up and play games or epics that are filled with movie type cut scenes I have never enjoyed a game at one point and then lost the urge to play it at a later point. I either enjoyed it from the beginning and still enjoy it today or I never liked it at all.

[Yurkie]

While I could blast someone on this thread I won't..... The Golden Age of gaming was somewhere between mid 70's and early 80's....and that's my opinion. Have to think about thing on a basic level, the World went from Pong to Colecovision in a matter of less than 10 years. Arcade games like donkey Kong and pacman took the world by storm... to under rate early 80's arcade game is being foolish in my opinion. Crash or no crash they got the ball rolling.

[midnight magicman]

"Golden Age" should refer to a specific time period. Not what our favorite time period is.

 

My favorite era for rock music is the 70s. But I'm not going to argue that the 70s was the "golden age of rock". It's universally accepted that that era was the 50s (Elvis, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley, etc.). That music was directly responsible for influencing everything that followed. The same should apply to video game history.

 

Peace