Dude the fact that the industry is stealing games and openly gloats it wants to make all games "services" (aka never give you a local application). Is the end goal.
So yeah, you need to know about the state of the industry to understand where game companies are taking us and it isn't for our benefit.
I do not want every new game to be an app controlled by googles cloud and thats exactly what the game industry wants. They want to move us all to the dumb terminal model of computing.
If you can't see that, you are blind. They openly talk about it on businss sites.
The age before the internet and monetization where we owned are games and internet penetration hadn't allowed companies to steal videogames functionality with drm.
The 90's AAA game modding scene was heads and shoulders above the modern AAA space because there was no internet, there was no incentive to hold back free level editors, file specs, access to contents inside the game files.
The last 20 years has undermind that hugely in big budget games. How could would have it have been to have level editing and a programming SDK for Need for speed Most wanted 2005? OR mass effect 1 + 2 for instance?
We've definitely lost a lot as game companies are forcing games into the mainframe dumb client model. AKA literally preventing you from owning the game you are buying.
Given that has always been the end goal of these companies since the beginning. Game preservation is going to be a nightmare going forward for all these server locked games.
So to say now is the golden age, means you're basically clueless about game preservation and what the mainframe/cloud model means for your basic rights.
The agenda is to turn PC into a more heavily drm'd locked down platform like mobile and control your software remotely.
Software as a service is literally a scam to invade your privacy, get you locked in and then jack up/extort you.
Look at all the DLC for SF V or Guilty Gear for instance. Huge amounts of cut content, sold back to you at ridiculously inflated prices.
Nothing like that existed in the 90's because there was no internet and analyticis to target stupid spendthrifts. Internet Analytics to target the spendthrift gamers has seriously fucked up gaming.
RTS exist, they collapsed and were renamed by the new generation "MOBA's"
League of legends, dota 2 and Heroes of newerth were just real time strategy games with the heroes and the lack of complex base management.
They collapsed into hero deathmatch if you will. So RTS didn't really disappear, the dumb masses merely renamed them MOBA's.
So if we're going by popularity, RTS for newbs (LOL, dota 2) are still very popular.
Complex RTS are definitely rarer things but that's because companies couldn't execute. Supreme commander 1 had a lot of good ideas poorly executed, supcom 2 was just a disaster because they were making it cross compatabile with console...
Company of heroes 1 was great but relied too much on hollywood wow and you can tell that the company of heroes 2 team had no idea where to take CoH after the success of the first one.
Often times game developers stumble into success. Then have no idea what to do once they have that success. Like they just hit a brick wall creatively.
The rise of the internet fucked up gaming because it allowed game companies to control the software and insert
all sorts of abusive monetization inside it.
The internet allowed game theft by EA, activision and Valve. It began with mmo's in the late 90's to take control of software out of the publics hand.
That is why gaming is such a clusterfuck, and why AAA gaming went to shit. High speed internet allowed game companies to take game functionality hostage, dedicated servers and level editors had to be massively scaled back to sell lootboxes and microtransactions.
Go loadup any popular mobile game like Final fantasy brave exvious or Fate grand order.
Single player games under the mainframe dumb client model. AKA they can now force kids to play games as publishers want because they control the values from their servers.
That was their wet dream since the late 90's. The fact that drm, world of warcaft, uo, and Team fortress 2 and League of legends even exist means the average gamer is retarded.
To watch so called "hackers" on hackernews fall all overthemselves to give up software ownership and eat drm in windows 10 was a far cry from the nerds of the 90's. We who remember palladium and wanted to keep control over our PC games because we knew the evil empire was coming to steal our PC games to get rid of dedicated servers, level editors, etc.
But the masses got internet and their stupid consumer behavior fucked up gaming.
All major franchises from the 90's got turned into mainframe - dumb client models.
Diablo 2 vs Diablo 3
Tribes vs Tribes ascend
Mechwarrior 1-4 vs Mech warrior online
The game industry gloats about it's great victory to server lock every new big budget game going forward on businss sites.
So no mass invasion's of privacy, stealing PC games via splitting the local application into two and selling it to the gullible masses as mmo' and "software as a service" / always online drm. Meant that the money men could now control the game from end to end.
Which is why gaming went to shit.
The internet radically altered the power between game buyer and game producer. When game companies can literally steal software by merely holding onto part of the software they produce in an internet enabled society, you know you are no longer in kansas anymore toto.
The shit the nerds of the 90's feared game true as the dumb masses ate up all the corporate PR to take over PC's and turn them into dumb terminals through slowly boiling the frog over decades and raising a new generation of gamers that don't are or don't know about the golden age of the 90's.
It was a golden age for a reason - the incentives were to produce good games, it was a "by gamers, for gamers" era, aka nerds producing games for other nerds.
When gaming went mainstream in the 2000's, everything got dumbed down to chimp level. We went from 8 or so weapons in quake to two in Halo 1 as bungie got bought out by microsoft.
Most PC developers entered the MMO space or jumped ship to make console games and there was a dry decade in PC gaming until it started back up in early 2008-2009 as a new generation of kids got internet and came online, leauge of legends hit and the most exploitive model became the most successful - take control of the game via mainframe-server, and sell flags to display skins to technology illiterate gamers.
To go from something like warcraft 3 to lol and dota is pretty much dystopian. There's no incentive not to make gmaes like the 90's where you got singleplaer campaign+multiplayr + level editors in the AAA space.
The microtransactions in the latest Ubisofts games are abhorrent and the non moddability of games like The Crew or For honor speak volumes about the locked down nature of modern AAA space.
So yeah gaming did go downhill - the internet allowed game companies to take control of the game software which means they can no infect it with all sorts of anti-fun game design.
That was the difference between pre mass internet penetration and after the internet hit the gaming masses.
So yeah, you need to know about the state of the industry to understand where game companies are taking us and it isn't for our benefit.
I do not want every new game to be an app controlled by googles cloud and thats exactly what the game industry wants. They want to move us all to the dumb terminal model of computing.
If you can't see that, you are blind. They openly talk about it on businss sites.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-01-making-pir...