Did companies just care more back then or did we?

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I remember reading interviews with various people saying that going to business meetings with Sony during the height of the PS1's popularity would involve sitting across from executives who had giant bookshelves filled wall-to-wall with copies of every game released for the system right there in their offices.

That meant that anyone going in with the idea of pitching a peripheral or devise to be licensed could (and would) be put to the test on the spot by people who were on top of their game... And I imagine that being equal parts cool and intimidating for young entrepreneurs "wanting in" on this newfangled videogame stuff, specially since this didn't seem to be the norm when conducting this kind of business -- you simply didn't expect the suits to know all about Spyro or Gran Turismo, but it seems to have worked and assured some sort of higher quality standards for the system itself (unsurprisngly, most junk released to be compatible with Sony's juggernaut did so without the company's blessing).

I think that level of care is what separated that particular era of gaming from the (mostly) dark ages we seem to be stuck in these days... Killing fan games, going after collectors, denouncing translations, releasing half-broken games for full price (good luck downloading "giant" fifteen megabytes patches on a dial-up connection in 1997 even if they were available, boys!) and penny-pinching while racking up record profits aren't exactly new practices, but the mindset has shifted in ways that have make them the go-to approach rather than an unfortunate side effect... Like, can you imagine modern Sony, Nintendo or any other major player granting a hearing to a company that had made an emulator for their most modern system the way old Sony did with Connectix and the Virtual Game Station? I can't.

However... I can also see the fact that the internet wasn't so widespread as to become a common household service shielding us from the worst of it, which can definitely paint that bygone era in a much better light than deserved (Sony vs Bleem! did make some pretty giant headlines, but that was the exception rather than the rule).

I don't know, I had started this thread wanting to nerd out about executives having offices full of games and things suddenly got way darker after that. It happens XD

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

Usually I would go smartass on this and say; Those big game playas got a full of themselves sniffing their farts and intimidating the lil playas saying “If you can play big time there’s no place for you here”.

I wish it was simple as that.

I can still remember how gaming mediums felt like an arms race. Which or what kind of storage format would they be using next for the Roms. Like Microsoft’s HD DVD against Sony’s Blu Ray it was the time of innovation until it just got stagnant.

As big as those 3 titans are we hardly felt their clashes anymore because they’re all busy cleaning up their current unending dumpster pile. The sad part they set those standards which they hardly couldn’t practice. The aftermath they intimidate if not repel those “little players” who’s got some great ideas but doesn’t have the resources to push them. Leaving them being devoured by those behemoths while butchering any chance for them to bring something new to the table.

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

What gets me is going after fan mods/translations/projects. A lot of that stuff is done through no financial benefit of the fans creating them, and are usually intended as an expression of their fandom.

Some of those fan projects can also be in response to the rightsholders not satisfying a demand, like translations for unsupported languages or fixing bugs in a broken game.

I don't think it's that we (the fans) don't care nowadays. I think the companies want to get to a point where nobody cares, where nobody is emotionally invested and just forms a habit of buying their stuff. Where they can do the bare minimum for ever-increasing profits.

The problem for me, though, is: if I'm not emotionally invested, if fan creators aren't invested, who is going to bother buying your games or engaging with your business?

 

[Sumea]

I can still remember how gaming mediums felt like an arms race. Which or what kind of storage format would they be using next for the Roms. Like Microsoft’s HD DVD against Sony’s Blu Ray it was the time of innovation until it just got stagnant.

Well, specifically Microsoft Xbox uses DVD's. Just dual layer as more consistent choice, the drive was faster (and louder) but loaded that much faster the data. But it did not ship HD DVD that was separate addon. Blu-Ray was nice for fitting so much into one disc, one layer but also pretty slow at launch like CD and DVD were at their start which is why most PS3 games had mandatory installs, when Xbox 360 did not. It is also kind of a blessing that it ended up this way, HD DVD's had mad bad manufacturing problems that plague the collections of any who have those discs, they just have stopped working due to invisible "disc rot" from bad manufacturing standards by some makers. There are few Blu-Ray discs with similar issue from a WB manufacturing plant but not as big of a slice as HD-DVD. Also Blu-Ray was about 10 gigs more per side so higher quality movies. It is a conspiracy theory with high plausibility that Microsoft put on a front for the format war so Sony would be focused on it, while Microsoft made first deals with movie streaming services for Xbox 360, like a exclusivity deal with Netflix.

 

[Turbo Kid]

I think it goes beyond video games. People have been complaining about Hollywood studios, comic books, etc. The entertainment world is not what it used to be. A lot of powerful, rich people in the entertainment world are more focused on their own goals and agendas then they are on what consumers want now. Somewhere along the way the corporate culture changed too, they used to at least pretend to care about us. Not anymore. There's an air of entitlement to a lot of companies now. It's "you will buy what we tell you to buy and put up with whatever we TELL you to put up with". It's kind of bled into celebrity culture too, but let me not go off on that tangent.

Here's the bottom line in my opinion. Change happens when they lose money, and unfortunately there are enough people out there buying products from these companies to keep them profitable. Some people don't realize the awful things these companies are doing, and some people are just hardcore fans who will defend these companies no matter what because it's become part of their identity. Some Nintendo fans are scary.

 

[Rocket2049]

companies just want more money and will cut every corner to do so
i don't blame them, but greed is what ruins modern games
there's relatively few games in last few years that were made with loving care and attention

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

I think it goes beyond video games.

You're not wrong there, either. Now and then, I lament My Little Pony's drop in popularity.
A lot of people dropped off of it, and rightly so, when Hasbro went on a fan content purge nearly 10 years ago. After all, why celebrate something that punishes you for celebrating it?
My Little Pony is kinda struggling as a property these days and Hasbro themselves can take a lot of the blame.

 

[Tortuga]

Both

 

[UnDubious]

The execs were younger and they were fighting for their place in a smaller industry, so yeah, they might have cared more if only on that level. It wasn't as corporate in the beginning either. Modern corporate environments make it difficult to impossible to care. Sony in particular started their games division with people from their music department, who were often creatives, and developers say the energy at those offices was something else in the early days.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Kinda, gaming was a massive Wild West market back then. No rules or standards, so there was more room to honestly express yourself. But there was also ppl who were totally trying to get rich quick but haven’t figured a way to do it.
What somewhat complicates things is that, in a way, every single video game company that existed 20 something years ago are gone. Different staff, principals, offices, everything (quite literally) changed, not just metaphorically. They’re not the same people. Many great legends of the past or just really old devs either now work in small companies or have smaller influences.

This extends to even more niche devs like Nakazawa Takumi, at the time making the infinity games under KID’s publications (that went defunct 19 years ago) but instead of going to Spike Chunsoft like his buddies Kodaka and Uchikoshi, he later reunited with them a decade and a half later once they all formed Too Kyo Games (the devs behind Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy, great game).

Cool story.