when was the golden age of the video game?

I really have to agree with this statement. I am a firm believer that limitations breed creativity in any art form. Plus, it's generally fun to come up with a clever solution around a problem that stands in your way. At least I think it is.

 

I'd disagree. Video games have been around for a fair amount of time now. It experienced the crash during the Atari days and came back with the Famicom/NES if that's a renaissance. There were great leaps in technology from the old Atari systems to the next generation and so on.

But today, I don't know how you could say it's still in infancy. Games are far less limited than ever with modern technology.

I can see the term Golden-Age meaning two things. Either the time at which the best of gaming was being made, which I think was from the NES to about 1999. Or it could just mean like what AVE said. Right now is actually a superb time for retrogaming. Maybe not if you want to actually buy all the games and systems, but if you either use emulation or flash cartridges then you can have access to hundreds of great games like never before.

 

The one thing I didn't like that happened during the late '80s-early 2000's was the lack of games that had come from bedroom programmers. Back in the old 8bit/16bit computer phase it was pretty easy to get your innovative game published and sold. Net Yaroze was about the only attempt I saw to reverse this trend, but nowadays there's quite a strong indie games community so I'm happy again

 

+-40 years in mass production isn't that much time, besides tech shouldn't be the measuring pole of how far videogames have progressed. We don't measure quality of the instrument to see how good a composition is or use how many colours available to the painter to measure the quality of a painting. But then why should we use tech to measure how the quality is, or how far we have come, for games?

Because in my experience, as a game designer, we actually stagnate because of that. At least in the field of game design, as in making game rules, after the crash we have become far more a culture of copy/paste of what is proven to work, and add different narrative/visuals, with comparably very little experimentation. Most designers are nowadays just looking to bring a new spectacle, because of rapid growth of tech, rather than interesting forms of play. Even most modern "game design" is very basic or pulled straight from other media to be more like that, rather than experimenting with actual play itself.

So if I would point to a golden age it would I would say it's the pre-crash days; because we haven't grown much past that point, in regards to the actual game systems, except for making thing look better. Not that there hasn't been any progress, but compared to that era it's glacial. Because at the end of the day a golden age/renaissance is about a big leap forward in knowledge an that only has that era, which is partially because it was the first real step and partially because you couldn't really hide behind spectacle.
And I would argue that AVE's thing would be more the golden age of retro gaming culture rather than gaming as a whole.

 

To me Must of been late snes early n64 so roughly 95 to 97 ish. These days I'm left feeling unsatisfied when completing a game on the Ps3/4...like there could of been more too it., where as back in 95/6/7 there was always the satisfaction of getting to the end of a game....like Ocarina of time! I dunno really unless its due to me getting older and games feeling easier!

 

I should have been more specific about major consoles. Also I thought both of those came out in 1994, not 91 and 93 respectively.

 

I can see your point to some extent but I wouldn't place where things seem to have slowed down at being after the crash. I do agree that when everything was new obviously things were the most creative, obviously. Talking about the first video games including ones such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders.

I see how you can make your point about "copy/paste" of ideas proven to work by pointing out how many platformers or shoot em ups are out there. But every game is it's own creation and has the chance to stand out. Presentation counts for something too. I think things got less interesting and creative in more recent years. I still think there was alot of creativity between the 80s up to 99 atleast. Ofcourse that's just generalizing things as there are always a few creative games.

About the point of consoles not growing except for looking better, I'd have to disagree there. Besides the visuals there is alot more that can be done technically over each generation. It's not just better graphics. Additional memory and processing power do enable you to do more things gameplay wise if the developer chooses to do so.

 

Presentation does count for something of course, but I'm mainly talking about the exclusive factor of videogames (which is of course game rules enforced by technology). Which is the same reason why their is a golden age of comics or TV, which doesn't mean everything was the best or most advanced back then but the quality, advances and diversity was then the greatest. Especially considering that videogames are as multifaceted as they are there would be "golden ages" for different facets.

Also I wasn't referring to consoles but rather the system of a game (rules, pretty pictures, usability, etc) but I do agree that consoles have become a bigger play field so to speak for devs, for better or worse.

 

I'd say the golden age would be from the 32-bit era up to early last gen. Just in terms of the sheer breadth of different gameplay experiences available nothing can hold a candle to the PS1 and PS2 era. Not only were the established genres well refined by this point, but entirely new genres like rhythm games, sandbox games, minigame compilations and 3D platformers were emerging as well. It was kind of a renaissance period where companies were willing to throw pretty much anything at the wall and see what would stick. It was just a really fun time to be a gamer overall.

 

in my opinion SNES till PS2 era

 

So far I think that pretty much every time period from 1985-present has been mentioned at least once.

And if someone grew up with old gaming computers 83-85 wasn't that bad for people with a C64, Amastrad (I'm 90% sure I spelled that wrong) or Speccy

 

It really depends since alot of good video games did not catch on to the mass market. It is not necessarily the console that is responsible for a good game. But rather the developers of the games. It seems almost that with every system release there's about 10-15 games that really stand out.

 

mid 80s .... for the reason atari was out and even was DOS was king for a little bit ( remember those floppy disc )

than around 85, a new console came into play and every one went crazy trying to buy that 8 bit system called Nintendo =0)

and i would say, everything after that you can call the silver age ...

 

For me it would be Megadrive until the end of the PS2 era, i still like modern games but i think with being older it's harder to get as excited or hyped

 

Okay, here is my opinion.

The Golden Age of Video games lasted from the Mid 80's to end of the 90's.

Why? Because this was when it was productive, a bunch of different platforms, and the "must spend billions to make triple AAA titles" hadn't started yet. Developers weren't scared to try something new. They weren't scared to try something different. Now I'm not saying we didn't get crappy games, we did. But the pubishers didn't bank all their money on paying billions of dollars to develop 1 game that had to sell 20 million copies so they break even.

Consoles were better then PC's back then. They tend to have their games they were good at, and the PC's had their games. Those were the days.

Now everything is made for consoles, which look worse then what PC are capable of displaying. Console can't even seem to do 1080p at 60 fps, controls suck crap for most the popular games. But hey, whatever. God, look at me rant.

I think you get the picture.

 

and i want to add this
back in the days games were more harder than nowadays , games didn't hold your hands , games didn't had DUmbed down gameplay
they were making games for gamers , now all I'm seeing is Games for non gamers (people that never played before can beat a game thanks to handholding , objective marks , regenhealth and other modern stuff)

p.s i hope you get my point

 

For me it was 1990-1999