people had much fewer games "back in the day." *discuss*

[dudeguy]

I read an article in EGM a while back (by Ed Semrad possibly?) who said that the average household bought 3-4 games a year. This was in the early 90s and video games were more expensive then. But even if you add up all the games bought in a year and adjusted it for inflation against the total dollar amount of games bought per year today, and compared it against income, no matter what way you slice it, people spend way more today and buy a higher quantity today. It's not uncommon to meet someone with a collection of 200+ games between physical and digital.

 

How many games did most people have growing up? Maybe 30-40 across all platforms? Back in the 90s, renting was very popular. I suppose that should be factored into how much people spent on games back then, if we are going to be fair. But still, it just wasnt a very big amount compared to today.

 

Does anyone have a theory about this? I think the economy being better than what it was then has a lot to do with it. People complain but I feel like the average person today has more expendable income than they did in the 90s. More money=more games. But even the number of games released seems a lot higher now especially with indie releases.

 

Do you think the fact that "graphics sucked" back then deterred a lot of people from buying games? You see average people with massive rooms full of games but that didnt seem to be a thing 25 years ago.

 

Thoughts?

[CapitanClassic]

2 hours ago, dudeguy said:

Does anyone have a theory about this? I think the economy being better than what it was then has a lot to do with it. People complain but I feel like the average person today has more expendable income than they did in the 90s.

Huh?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_United_States_boom#Background

[128Kgames]

Since when did the 90's become "back in the day" ? ?

 

Now, you wanna talk 80's, I know lots oh households with huge collections. 

 

I lived in one. ?

[Tanooki]

Yeah I'd have I guess lived in one too.  We got the NES in the Christmas test launch of 1985 where a few did make it west despite the online delusion.  That had 2, got 2 more with it.  The following year I know we got at least 4-6 more games.  By the time the Genesis popped my brother drank the foul kool-aid and I kept on going until 1991 (13 by then.)  I know about that year we had at least around 40 NES carts, 50-55 if you counted when the fool realized his mistake and got another NES and a series of his own games (10-15 or so I think.)  Counting 85 is a bit tricky being the last week of a year but 1986 into 1991 was a good 5 1/2 years NES games got bought personally or gifted.  I know I stopped with MM5 pretty sure, wanted to save all I could and did all I could to earn money for the SNES.  40/5.5 is 7.27 games a year average (9.1 if you go up to 55/5.5 years.)

 

I also got a Gameboy in 1989 for Christmas with Mario Land, and I'd buy a few games a year for it too as my secondary on the go thing to do.

 

When SNES arrived within a short period I bought up Act Raiser and Gradius III at the same time, and Christmas added Super Castlevania, Ghouls n Ghosts, Final Fight blending that into a few NES/GB games I got in 91.

 

I wasn't short on games, but I also realize that's where a lot of my interest was and money went into, especially once the comparative bs we are infuriated with now with games was destroying the local baseball card and comics markets  in 1990-92 which crashed them hard.  I got priced out of 2 things I enjoyed so my cut of the money got diverted into more games.   We also never rented.

 

By the time I started buying used games in mid 1995 I had a few dozen GB games, and SNES I had numbers comparable to the NES era.

 

The thing was I guess I had more than a fair many others did, but I also got generously gifted enough, and other stuff I'd use coupons, weekly sales, and other shortcuts at retail (clearance, store closures, etc) to get games too.  I also saw the MSRPs in Nintendo stuff and refused to let some shitty store rip me off for $60-70 for a game that should have been $50 as that would be a loss of weeks of chores allowance.  I paid the prices we saw until HD set in and raised the $50 bar that far back...not the inflated stuff we see on TRU and Kaybee stickers ripping people off.  Which makes it even worse because prices then compared to now kind of sucked vs what you got on a paycheck.

 

I think between that and rentals being so prolific people did have smaller game collections and smaller total purchases.  You have to remember it really was not until the 90s, mid 90s, that buy sell trade stores and money order took off in mass.

[GameGirl420]

I had friends wth huge game rooms/collections back in the late 90s/early 00's,that's nothing new. I knew people who even owned arcade cabinets then.

 

But yea there's way more games at our disposal now. That's a no brainer considering all the emulators and free stuff of today. 

[+jeremiahjt]

Video games are more mainstream now, for sure. That brings in more types of people, including ones with plenty of disposable income that like to show off what they got with that disposable income.  It also brings in more people who do not have much disposable income and who do not show off their relatively meager collection. Of course we do not about these people because they are not all over social media showing stuff off.

[+jgkspsx]

When I was a kid, we exclusively rented new release games. The only games we bought were Christmas/birthday presents, Blockbuster used copies, and Kay Bee /Toys R Us clearance specials. I had a smaller collection than most kids I knew. But then I started garage saling after I got a summer job and never stopped.

 

That said, it’s very common to find collections of 100 Atari 2600 games or dozens of NES games.

[TheDevil'sCompass]

For me it's the availability of used games as well as the reduction in costs from other entertainment options. At least where I lived, used game availability wasn't really a thing in the 90's or earlier unless you happened on a garage sale that had some. The internet was just becoming available in homes so unless you had a CS degree, you probably never even heard about newsgroups let alone purchased something through one. Computers were also more expensive in regard to price per performance. So, if you had to have a computer too, it really ate into your console budget. I believe it was also around 1990 that I first walked into a used record store. With CDs being more durable than records, it suddenly made perfect sense to check the used places first. VHS movies were still going strong and the release windows were quickly changing. No such thing as streaming so if you had a favorite movie, you had to buy it or find a way to copy it. A lot of money was spent at rental places and for blank VHS or blank audio cassettes during that time period. Now all of that money can be dedicated to buying games, if I want. For the price of a couple of VHS rentals every month I can now watch movies/shows 24/7 and never see the same thing twice if I so desire. Today there are more games and more ways to play them than ever before, but there's also less competition for my entertainment dollar. I still buy the occasional movie or song/album but nowhere near what I used to.

[Mikebloke]

The average price I paid in the 90s was between 50p-£1 because that was the second hand boot sale price. Now the average is closer to £10+ and that is factoring 'cheap' steam games. I don't have a lot of nes games which was my core system first after the 2600. I think both were on about a dozen games for the longest time even with that cheap second hand price. I bought, I played, when I completed or got bored I bought more. I got into a bad habit of buying and not playing, both console and pc. I'm much better with that now. 

[Keatah]

Dunno.. But ever since I got into videogames my stash has increased time and time again over the years. There's been ups and downs as I moved from platform to platform. But today I have more than I could have dreamed possible back then. Not the fake 90's back in the day. But the real 70's when it all started. I've got stuff I may never even get to, ever ever ever!

 

10 hours ago, dudeguy said:

I read an article in EGM a while back (by Ed Semrad possibly?) who said that the average household bought 3-4 games a year.

That sounds pretty low. Even among the most apartmenty and trailer park'ish kids among us had more than 3-4 purchases a year.

 

10 hours ago, dudeguy said:

Do you think the fact that "graphics sucked" back then deterred a lot of people from buying games?

No way. In the late 1970's and early 1980's videogames were still quite a new form of entertainment and art. A new way of competition and playing and socializing. Sure the graphics may have been blocky 2600 shit and all, but each successive game on average was getting better and more complex sound/graphics. And this has continued through today's top of the line RTX 4xxx series. So "graphics sucked" wasn't a thing - only when comparing against the arcade or another console did it take on an importance. A minor importance. For discussion.

 

What was a deterrent (to me) was the ridiculous cutesy shit and generally dumb games. Including excessive FMV. And all the NES garbage. However the market was growing big enough to offer something for everyone. Especially if you consider the whole ecosphere of gaming - consoles AND computers.

 

Over time I gravitated toward sandboxes and sims and non-mainstream stuff on the PC. I do very little AAA modern gaming today.

 

Quote

You see average people with massive rooms full of games but that didnt seem to be a thing 25 years ago.

It typically wasn't. When a collection gets that big it isn't about playing. It's a thing to compensate for a small dick and brag on the internet. Or collect to just collect. Even those megacollection owners will have just a small core of go-to games they play on a regular basis. The rest is mostly wasting time, space, and money.

 

Like with Apple II, I had a mini-megacollection back in the 80's. Comprised of a surprising amount of store bought material. And It grew over a period of 12+ years give or take. I never showed it off.

 

I played about 30 percent of it in-depth and just occasionally played/admired the rest. Had my core go-to's.. Mostly I was collecting to collect and build "something". What? I dunno. A library for the future I suppose.

 

Today someone else built that library for me. And all that's needed is 6 clicks to update it. Lightyears beyond anything we imagined possible. Shit it'd take 299 years to download everything from it at 300 baud. 74 years at 1200 baud. And some 40 years at 56K. An hour or so with a fast internet connection today. Minutes with last-mile fibre.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Keatah

[dudeguy]

12 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

Huh?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_United_States_boom#Background

If you look at what people have now versus what they had in 1990, you'd understand what I mean. These days you can be living off food stamps and still have a $1k iPhone and a 60" TV at home. In the parking lot of my apartment, you see mostly SUVs made in the last 3-5 years. Most jobs I see advertise are starting between $20 and $25 an hour. Average per capita income in the U.S. is about $67k a year.

 

Cost of goods has risen for sure, same with cost of housing, but honestly, people have it pretty damn good from what I am seeing. Look how much stupid crap people buy off Amazon. if there is a product that could be conceived, it's been invented. people have money to throw around.

[+jgkspsx]

We have everything people had in the 90s except free time, affordable housing, user-serviceable used cars, pension plans, employer-sponsored Cadillac health care plans, blue collar jobs that pay enough to buy a house and two cars and a vacation home and go on cruises and international trips, real-life social networks, wide-ranging public involvement in community life, and so on… but that iPhone and all those TV channels really make up for it ? 

 

Without getting political, there is a direct and measurable link between the rise of cheap imported consumer goods and the much smaller, poorer, lonelier lives most people live now. Having stuff will never make up for  the need for one’s life to have meaning, stability, and warm human connections. 

[youxia]

It's funny how people are usually willing to ignore the simplest explanations in favour of convoluted ones.

 

In this case it's really not a great mystery. One, videogames back then were perceived as the domain of kids and nerds. Since PSX/PC/WWW this has changed and they have been accepted into mainstream. So, the user count went through the roof. Two, kids don't have incomes, only begging power. Now adults are in the game too, and they do have incomes, and the acceptance has changed as well, so kids get more.

 

Yes, these are sweeping generalizations, but you also know they are true.

 

And three, as an aside, you actually did own your games back then, now you don't, if you buy digital. So, the whole OP might not be true anyway

[Lostdragon]

Gaming as a kid was for myself, far different than it is now. 

 

 

You only got games for Xmas, Birthdays or saved pocket money to buy them and you went with systems everyone else had, so you could do swapises. 

 

 

As a UK Atari 800XL owner you simply couldn't find software unless family visited big towns and mail order, asking folks to send a cheque/postal order was asking far too much. 

 

Parents never showed any real interest in games (sister wasn't a Gamer and we hated each other as was) it was case of.. You've a TV and console/computer in your room, go and play it, very rare you'd be allowed to hook it up to the living room TV. 

 

Mine convinced it'd damage the TV, they didn't know of screen burn, were just convinced it would damage anything above the cheap colour portable they'd picked up for my room?

Edited May 14, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Cebus Capucinis]

At least in the US, this is why computers were so great during that time period. For the price of a box of floppy disks and willingness to "share" or "trade" with others, your 4 games turned into 20!

[Keatah]

4 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

but that iPhone and all those TV channels really make up for it ? 

And cost of those services are a substantial amount for those choosing the budget life. All be damned, how cool is it to download a video in 5 seconds vs 2 minutes!

[zzip]

On 5/13/2022 at 4:47 PM, dudeguy said:

I read an article in EGM a while back (by Ed Semrad possibly?) who said that the average household bought 3-4 games a year. This was in the early 90s and video games were more expensive then. But even if you add up all the games bought in a year and adjusted it for inflation against the total dollar amount of games bought per year today, and compared it against income, no matter what way you slice it, people spend way more today and buy a higher quantity today. It's not uncommon to meet someone with a collection of 200+ games between physical and digital.

 

How many games did most people have growing up? Maybe 30-40 across all platforms? Back in the 90s, renting was very popular. I suppose that should be factored into how much people spent on games back then, if we are going to be fair. But still, it just wasnt a very big amount compared to today.

I don't know, back in the 80s Atari days,  friends were getting new games what seemed like every week.   Games were typically $19.99-$29.99 (about $59 and $89 today according to the inflation calc).  We were not rich by any means.   After the crash, many games were marked down to $5 and our collections really swelled.

 

One big thing that was different was most games were arcade-style and your game lasted 5-10 minutes before you'd try again.  So maybe by the next week you are tired of it and looking for something else.    These days gameplay lasts many hours.   If you only play a couple of hours per day, these games can take weeks and months to finish.   For example I've been playing Elden Ring for two months and have 200+ hours in.    I'm not buying another game until I finish it.

 

In the 90s I was gaming on PC, but still buying games faster than 3-4 per year.   I don't know if things were more expensive on the console side, but games were already much longer than the early 80s games so there may be less of an itch for people to want new games.

 

On 5/13/2022 at 4:47 PM, dudeguy said:

Does anyone have a theory about this? I think the economy being better than what it was then has a lot to do with it. People complain but I feel like the average person today has more expendable income than they did in the 90s. More money=more games. But even the number of games released seems a lot higher now especially with indie releases.

During the early 80s videogame boom the economy was pretty bad-  high inflation led to high interest rates causing a severe recession.   That didn't stop us from getting games or going to arcades.   Ironically, the game crash happened just as the general economy was recovering.

 

If you think about it, games are a cheaper form of entertainment than taking a family out to the movies or a major-league sports game/amusement park/broadway show/etc.    So I think that's why they can do ok in bad economic times.   The economy wasn't great in the early part of the 90s either,  the "90s boom" was the last half of the 90s coinciding with the dot-com craze and rush to fix every system for Y2K.

 

On 5/13/2022 at 4:47 PM, dudeguy said:

Do you think the fact that "graphics sucked" back then deterred a lot of people from buying games? You see average people with massive rooms full of games but that didnt seem to be a thing 25 years ago.

Not for us kids.   We were always amazed when the newest game or newest systems pushed graphics a little bit further.  Although I remember my father was not impressed with the graphics,  he'd complain "these games don't look like anything!"   Oddly enough, he eventually took a liking to Qix, which had minimal graphics even by the standards of the day.

 

As for rooms full of games..  I don't know how common that really is.   I think a lot of game youtubers and online streamers do that as a backdrop for their videos.   And I'm sure some collectors do that.   But I don't know if it represents the average gamer.

[Keatah]

5 hours ago, zzip said:

As for rooms full of games..  I don't know how common that really is.   I think a lot of game youtubers and online streamers do that as a backdrop for their videos.   And I'm sure some collectors do that.   But I don't know if it represents the average gamer.

Having seen many setups I don't think it's a common thing. Most of my colleagues and acquaintances have two or three consoles at most. And not a large library, maybe 40 games per - and that's pushing it.

 

Most of the youtube stuff is over the top and excessive. How else to get clicks and views? Nobody wants to see the same shit they got on their own shelf anyways. It be like I never did a video to show off my emulator stuff. Everybody has emulators. And emulators are not exciting to look at.

Edited May 16, 2022 by Keatah

[CatPix]

I think your mileage may vary depending on where you lived, if you had pocket money or not, and hell simply if you knew about video games.

Back in the early 90's my console was my brother's NES. I think between him and me my original "kid's" stash of NES games, mostly from boying in garage sales, went up to 20 at best.

We received no money as kids, but my parents would rather buy us stuff. Not video games, not because they didn't want but because there weren't any in local supermarket until the early 2000's.

My SNES games collection grew a bit larger but probably not over 30 games, and again, most of them sourced from garage sales after 1995 as well.

It's only when I acquired a Playstation for me around 1999 and a video game store - in fact, a VHS rental service but it was complemented with video game selling (I never heard of video game renting being a thing here... In fact it's pretty much written on games that they can't be rented ) so since PS1 was already a bit old, I got more PS1 games between 1999 and 2001 when I got a PS2 than I got NES and SNES games.

But yeah, when asking my friends today, they also remember that having more that 20 games before the PS1 came was quite unusual. And owning more than one system was, too.

[Austin]

On 5/14/2022 at 12:13 PM, Cebus Capucinis said:

At least in the US, this is why computers were so great during that time period. For the price of a box of floppy disks and willingness to "share" or "trade" with others, your 4 games turned into 20!

20? That's it?

[carlsson]

On 5/14/2022 at 6:13 PM, Cebus Capucinis said:

For the price of a box of floppy disks and willingness to "share" or "trade" with others, your 4 games turned into 20!

Indeed. While it is nothing to be proud of, usually a home computer owner's game collection to 70-80%, sometimes up to 95% consisted of pirate copies. Of course it damaged sales and strictly speaking was illegal activities, but it would easily give you access to hundreds of games for barely any money. Eventually I bought more original games for my C64, mainly on budget tapes but also some on floppy disk, so in the end I had a decent amount of originals, far more than the typical C64 user. Cartridges never was a big thing other than the utility carts, because 1) the supply dried up between 1984-1990 and 2) the cartridges never dropped in price so those were affordable in the same way budget tape and disk games were.

 

Regarding the comment that owning a (gaming) computer was so expensive that it ate into your console budget, I suppose one would have to make a choice which one to play on. The early 8-bit computers dropped in price quite a lot after 1983-84, but maybe the comparison was with Atari ST, Amiga or even PC compatibles.

[Cebus Capucinis]

10 hours ago, Austin said:

20? That's it?

Nobody around me had BBS access.

[Lord Mushroom]

1) In the 90s only kids played games. Kids have a very limited amount of money, and the only games their parents would buy were gifts for them. Now adults play games, and they have a lot of money.

 

2) Adjusted for inflation (and especially adjusted for household income), big games were more expensive in the 90s.

 

3) In the 90s, all console games were expensive. Now you can get games of all prices, including free.

 

4) In the 90s, previous cosoles sucked compared to latest ones, so you couldn´t buy good old games. Even if there were such games available, there was not a good marketplace for them (no widespread internet). Now you can buy cheap and great old games with a click of a button.

[Tanooki]

You lost me on #4 as that's utter nonsense, but the rest makes sense accounting for time and value of a dollar, lack of internet too so you'd by local, play local.

[Lord Mushroom]

3 hours ago, Tanooki said:

You lost me on #4 as that's utter nonsense, 

What I meant was that there was a larger difference between console generations in the 90s than it is today. The Atari 2600 had much less appeal to gamers in the 90s than the PS3 do today. Also, today there are many people who prefer old games (many of which where new in the 90s), or at least like both old and new.

 

That doesn´t explain why people have more games now, as those second-hand games come from other households. But it does help to explain why people buy more games (and sell more games), and have more games in their collections, as opposed to them being "somewhere waiting to thrown out".