[ekianjo]

> Imho you can spend all your life being sad about missing the old days and hoping someone revives them

Oh come on. You dismiss a whole page of text to such a simple argument ? That old stuff was better than the new ? Did you even read the article ?

There are measurable ways to look at games, and it's actually very clear that while game hardware has been evolving very fast, game design and options left to the player have been decreasing exponentially with time.

Why do you think there's a retro game movement? No, it's not pure nostalgia, there are genuine reasons to prefer older games over the new ones we have in 2014. And in all media there are ups and downs, there are "golden ages" where stuff is discovered, invented, discovered, and darker ages where nothing much happens and it's just rehashing the same thing over and over again. You see this kind of things in every form of culture, why would Gaming be any different? Why do you think Games would be linearly progressing towards an ideal state ?

[erikb]

GTA5 has way more options than GTA1. This doesn't say anything about the general development but it should show that there are also these games where choices increased over time.

If you say that the number of choices in game design and options decreases over time, you should back that up with data. Otherwise it's just an opinion and as you've already read in my comment my opinion is different.

[ekianjo]

Well, Mass Effect 2 was just a long corridor instead of having actual levels like Mass Effect 1. The level system was way more simplified as well than in the 2nd. And Mass Effect 1 was a way more simple game than let's say, Baldur's Gate or NeverWinter Nights from the same studio years before.

We have yet to see ANY RPG being as feature full as Ultima 7, out in 1992. Real time weather changes, AI companions with personalities, open world, huge story, NPC who actually feel real (they work during the day, go back home and sleep at night). There's nothing like that still in 2014, despite numerous attempts and failed promises.

Where are the flight simulators ? They are completely extinct. The best ones were made in the 90s and the genre disappeared in the 2000s. They were complex games too.

GTA is maybe the only game that you can show as going against that trend. That does not mean the game industry as a whole is making more complex games as they go, quite the opposite.

[erikb]

Yes, I agree that there are more simplified games today than ever before. But the same is true for deep, detailed games. There are simply way more games AAA, Indie, and free/open-source. Ever heard of Dwarf Fortress, CataclysmDDA, or Skyrim (yes even AAA titles)? There are many games with more depth and details a single person can handle in a lifetime, look around. And if GTA doesn't offer more flight simulator than any of the 90s games, I don't know how you evaluate flight simulators. If it is the details in physics and control have a look at Kerbal Space Program (never played it, never was a fan of flight sims, sorry). If you want simulators in general have a look at Truck Simulator. There is even a harvester simulator but that might only exist in German, not sure.

I bet if you look around hard enough you might even find an open source implementation of your favourite flight simulator with better graphics. Wish you the best luck in finding one. :-)