The Future of Retro Gaming?

Gaming isn't as simple as it used to be.  Back in the days of my youth we didn't have to deal with online connections and constant game updates, you just plugged that shit in and went.  Some PC games required patches to be downloaded or expansion packs to be bought but that was about as complex as it got and for your average youth, we were rockin' the consoles anyway.

Today is vastly different, you cant even start a game up anymore without the system prompting you to update something or sign up/log into some other 3rd party service.  Hell, this is an age where some games, even single player ones, require an internet connection to be played at all.  So while I was shopping for old games today I started thinking about something.

I wonder what retro gaming will be like in the far future?  When I'm long dead and the Playstation is up to its 8 or 9th iteration and the idea of 16 bit being "cutting edge" is laughable.  Kind of like how we view shit like that Atari now.

Right now, retro gaming is easy since it was a much simpler time.  If you can get your hands on a system and a few cartridges/discs then all you have to do is hook that shit up, flick the switch and BOOM you're playing your old favorites.  But will things be that simple in the future? Will retro gaming even exist in the same way that we know it today?

Think about it, plenty of games have mandatory updates that require internet connections or servers that they need to check with before you can start playing.  What happens in the future when these servers don't exist and there is no update server for your game to connect to?  Will some punter in a used game shop be able to buy used games and just pop them in and have a grand old time?  I don't think so.  Things right now are OK I guess, I can totally see PS3 or 4 games still working in the far flung future but with internet connections and digital distribution maybe the joy of picking up a dusty old game in a used book store will be long gone.

What I fear is that in the future the idea of buying retro games will be dead and companies will charge stupid amounts of money for the back catalogs of games.  Half the reason I don't use things like the Wii virtual console or the classics collection on PSN is because I can go round the corner and pick up the original disc versions of the games for about half the money.  When you think about that, in a way it's already happening.

Still, I'm just rambling and I'll be long dead before anything like this happens so it's whatever

Placing The Blame

Look at that picture, look at it!

I've been saying for a long long time that modern gaming has been getting easier and easier as time goes on.  The above picture explains why things are going that way.

In case there are people who don't know, the above picture is people complaining about being stuck in Super Metroid on the WiiU Virtual Console.  The reason why this picture upsets so many people including myself isn't the fact that people are getting stuck, but they are getting stuck at the simplest most self explanatory bits of the game.

The ones that really get me are the pictures of people complaining about how they can't open certain doors.  It's quite obvious to anyone with a pair of working eyes that normal doors are blue, so you must need some kind of item to get through the red ones but because these people aren't being led by the nose it doesn't occur to them straight away that they have to explore the environment.

Now this picture upsets me but it doesn't make me angry because I really don't know who to blame for this.  At first I want to blame the developers of modern games, for making hand holding ease fests.  Modern games being made far too easy has allowed people like those included in the above picture to believe that gaming is one of those past times that doesn't require much effort to be good at.  While that is true for a lot of newer titles, back in the day you'd have to dedicate yourself to a single game just to be able to complete the damn thing.

But on the other hand I can't just flat out blame developers, because the players are just as much to blame as them.  Gaming has become a mainstream thing, and quite frankly is has started to attract idiots who don't understand and aren't willing to understand why this hobby was so appealing to us long time players in the first place.  Sadly the numbers of these people are quite high so developers start making games for them because, like any company, they want to make money and that is fair.

At the end of the day though, it doesn't really matter who is to blame for games getting easier, the above picture is a good indication for the reason why games are so easy and what's even worse is that because there are many players like this, games are only going to get easier from here on out.

At least we still have people like From Software making shit like Dark Souls, so not all hope is lost.