There haven't been any good games since...

[Luz de Luna Luz de Luna Luz de Luna's icon]

I remember this being a very hot topic way back when and one we never found a consensus or definitive answer for (I mean, how could we?).

So, let me ask you: when's your cutoff year for this sort of thing? When do you think gaming stopped evolving or simply didn't matter to you anymore? I personally stopped paying attention to the whole gaming world in 2004, so that's the year I'll pick.

What about you?

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

I don't think I have a cut-off year? I've had a similar debate with myself about wrestling over the years, but I've always found a good alternative when one kind of wrestling wasn't fun to watch.

Same can be said for games. I'm sure good games are being made, it just might take more effort on the individual's part to find them. Plus, my standards aren't terribly high to begin with. I'll play most any game if it's cheap enough hehe

 

[Elwiwi]

No good games since 1972 for real tho isn't 2025 a great year for gaming? ( Let's pretend Xbox and 90€ Mario kart didn't happen)

 

[blossom357]

People who say this about games, music, books, etc are always wrong. If you've lost interest in seeking out the gems, that's totally fine. But be honest: that's on you. There will always be good stuff being made, whether that's in the mainstream or indie.

 

[PrismRed]

I never thought about it actually, we already getting to a point where there are enough backlogs to last you a lifetime alongside few new good ones, might as well enjoy what we have right now.

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

I don’t think there’s a clean cutoff for me, it’s more like a slow fade. Around 2010, I started feeling like the magic was thinning. Not because games got worse, but because the industry shifted. More polish, less soul. I still play, but I rarely feel the way I did during the Dreamcast or PS2 era. That said, I respect anyone’s cutoff. 2004’s a solid pick, right before HD gaming changed everything.

 

[csanjuro]

since 20XX

 

[skramz]

20..12? maybe 2013 but after that shit just kept getting staler and staler

 

[TheSoulWalker TheSoulWalker]

I would argue the Turn around 2016 was probably the beginning of the end for AAA, that's not to say we haven't had any bangers since then but when we started to pivot hard into live service games things have turned for the worst on a lot of fronts. We're now stuck in a string of companies trying to chase trends rather than making games that people are actually looking for.

 

[Luz de Luna Luz de Luna Luz de Luna's icon]

People who say this about games, music, books, etc are always wrong. If you've lost interest in seeking out the gems, that's totally fine. But be honest: that's on you. There will always be good stuff being made, whether that's in the mainstream or indie.

That's why I said it was a PERSONAL thing, though.

IIRC, Accursed Farm had made a list filtering out years and years of gaming to match people's cutoff years. I thought it was brilliant.

 

[RandomHajile]

I remember this being a very hot topic way back when and one we never found a consensus or definitive answer for (I mean, how could we?).

So, let me ask you: when's your cutoff year for this sort of thing? When do you think gaming stopped evolving or simply didn't matter to you anymore? I personally stopped paying attention to the whole gaming world in 2004, so that's the year I'll pick.

What about you?

Hmmm, I always tell people it was 2010. To me, 2009 was the last good year for gaming. Keep in mind, I've been gaming since 1982. But in 2010 there were a lot of signs things were changing. You had Draogn Age 2 basically shame that entire franchise with sloppy design the likes of which I have yet to see equaled. Then you had Mass Effect 3, which also shamed its series with that god awful ending.

Diablo 3's release was also a giant cluster****. Yeah, they made it better years later, but the real money auction house was a sign that things had greatly changed. For me, it was a clear point of no return.

 

[qw90700]

I personally stopped paying attention to the whole gaming world in 2004, so that's the year I'll pick.

I would too if the golden age of gaming hadn't come in 2004 lol. After Sega Genesis-era I was not impressed with PS1-era much even after I had my 3 favourite games Persona 1, Racing Lagoon and Breath of Fire 4. PS2 didn't start strong. PC games weren't really great but at least we had legendary Deus Ex 1, Fallout 1-2, Redline, Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption and such. The most popular games at the time were more like same shit, not better than previous games but somehow got popular just because they are better among rubbish and this is what new generation kids knows. For example I never liked Half Life games and early GTA games. But then boom Unreal Tournament 2004, boom GTA San Andreas, boom Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, boom Jade Empire, boom Painkiller, boom Silent Hill 4, boom The Movies, boom Radiata Stories, boom Rogue Galaxy, boom NFS Underground 2, boom Metal Gear Solid 3, boom Shadow of the Colossus, boom Battlefield 2, boom Guitar Hero, boom Steambot Chronicles, boom BOOM BOOOOOOM. No more please!!!! I had to sell my kidney to keep up buying all these legendary games!!! Show mercy I beg of you... and the video game industry fell into coma with stupid Bioware dating sim "RPGs", stupid online games, stupid pew pew shit, stupid PS3 cinematic games and its wannabe games on PC while rarely we played decent games like Persona 4, Dishonored 1, Alpha Protocol, Fallout New Vegas and Radiant Historia and then Freedom Wars and Witcher 3 released and video game history died for good in 2016 after Persona 5 released lol.

If da golden age of gaming 2004-2005 had to be a gif it would be this lolol:

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

I'm not sure if I could pick a definitive cut-off year, maybe around 2012 or 2013 were the last years where the consistency of genuinely great game releases came to an end. 2010's as a whole was definitely the turning point, and while there were still a lot of great games in that decade, I don't think it's unfair to say it's become a lot harder to find really good stuff (Though I guess that all depends on your own standards).

 

[Tonberry]

I don't think I have a cutoff date for when gaming got "bad", because I never think it did, at least not in such broad strokes.

But I DEFINITELY have a cutoff date for when I stopped paying as much attention to the world surrounding videogames because it got to a point where it was so exhausting slavishly following every trade show, every controversy, every giant flop, every monumental success, and it kind of actively took away a lot of the magic of video games for me, even the positive parts.
That cutoff date is probably around 2020-2021, when I had recently gotten my feet wet working in the field too, so videogames in general was kind of overwhelming in a new way.

Nowadays, I'm much more happier and WAY less cynical with the medium in general, I get surprised with new stuff I hadn't heard of before (old and new) and I'm way more keen on trying out new things compared to then because I can sort of cut my pretenses and just react naturally to things.

 

[Luz de Luna Luz de Luna Luz de Luna's icon]

Wow, I’m surprised yours ended in 2004

It may have had something to do with the fact that my computer and consoles had all become obsolete by then and that I was starting high school at the same time (effectively killing both my means and my time for caring), but I really don't recall getting excited by anything between Call Of Duty and The Last Of Us, despite being pretty actively gaming with friends in the meantime.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

the cutoff is somewhere after Skyrim and before Starfield, I think in the case of Bethesda and Obsidian it might have been the Microsoft acquisition which fucked things up idk tho (only Obsidian I played was Fallout NV, The Outerworlds and i dropped out of Avowed pretty early in the game)

Watch Dogs 1 & 2 were good but I hear only bad things about Ubisoft nowadays (I only ever played the Watch Dogs games from them, Watch Dogs Legion was not too good)

I think the cause behind our bad games are internal politics in the big studios mostly (I didn't dig that up but it would make sense), RTX and Unreal 5 were also absolute net negative for the entire gaming industry

(the reason why we have such overpriced and bad GPUs nowadays is cause we hit the physical limit for silicon manufacturing, they keep wanting to improve performance every year but the only way to do that is to make it five times more expensive, there's a guy on youtube that compared the TSMC prices for every nvidia GPUs it keep getting more expensive to make)