what is the best and worst thing about modern gaming?

Best - interfaces on most games are better to players

worst - the rush to get out games fast with publishers pushing deadlines so you have stupid designs in the game. E.G diablo 3 at launch really damaged its reputation without asking players about the AH.

Best: Games are generally “good” now. Lemons are few and far between.

Worst: “Lifestyle” games. Playing games is not my lifestyle, let alone playing a single game. Screw timed events, logon bonuses, and all that garbage.

Best - The standard of games is generally better, in terms of their core gameplay mechanics and their moment-to-moment action. Even an awful game of today (Mass Effect Andromeda) is more fun to actually play than a gem from 20 years ago (Metal Gear Solid).

Worst - Everything is about being able to make money from a game after it has been released. Games are released with pieces missing, so that they can be filled in with DLC or micro-transactions later on. Often, these games have more than enough content in their base iteration, but it's bollocks when you're looking at a list 'extras' that must be purchased for real money. This is okay in a free-to-play game, but when I pay £50 for a game, I don't want to be presented with hundreds of pounds' worth of additional content. Another aspect of this that sucks is that games no longer have cheats in them. In the old days, you'd finish a game and feel like you'd beaten it, then go back and f*ck around for a few more hours with cheats activated. Nowadays, there are no cheats because developers would lose that sweet micro-transaction money.

Best - There are so many games.

Worst - There are so many games.

Best: Games from all generations/time periods are more readily available than they've ever been, and the indie market is booming. It's easier than ever to find something you like or try something entirely new.

Worst: The AAA market has devolved into the same few gameplay mechanics over and over with different skins slapped on for the most part. Either that or you spend more time watching your game than you do playing it, and the gameplay feels like an afterthought. Many of the sequels might as well be DLC for all the changes they've made. If not a same sequel or the same game under a different name, another dang remaster of a game that didn't need one. Basically the AAA market needs a donkey kick in the rear.

In second place comes unfinished games that need patches to work and the absurd amount of monetization, though that seems to have abated at least a little since last year.

The best thing going is definitely the variety and accessibility of what's on offer. Pretty much no matter who you are it is the best time to be playing video games, as they say.

The worst? It is cheating to just say Gamers? The worst parts of our community are hardly new to modern gaming of course but it does feel much harder to avoid.

I want to change my answer to this. Especially the first part of the first sentence. I'm playing Morrowind on my Xbox One in 4K.

Best: Indie development has reached a point that can compare on equal footing with the quality of big studios. That gives us both variety and general quality unheard of...

Worst: The AAA industry continues its trend of designing by committee, so that even when they release few games that would be considered garbage, the idea that they can release anything original or noteworthy is even rarer...

Worst - Reliance on internet. It means there are many games not optimised/unplayable at launch without patches. It also means some games will just disappear.

Best - Instant access. As someone in a third rate territory I love than I can get almost any game now, generally at or around launch.

Best - autosave after checkpoints

Worst - rpg elements in everything

Worst - So many games ship unfinished now. Destiny and FFXV are two of the biggest offenders as of late that come to mind. Then when they decide to add in meaningful additional content, they charge you for it. And you know the craziest part? People are happy to pay for it! They sold you an unfinished product, ask you for more money to finish it, and people are like "fuck yeah!" No Man's Sky and Sea of Thieves obviously deserve a mention but at least all their content updates are free?

Best - Seemingly niche games can be hugely successful doing their own thing. Monster Hunter and Yakuza have been churning away, essentially continuing to do what they've been doing since day 1 and I guess the stars just aligned because both series seem to have exploded in popularity recently. Warframe is another one that's just sorts been in it's own lane that seemed to breech mainstream news when more and more disgruntled Destiny players stumbled upon it. Crazy thing was, at least from what I can tell, it was already doing great, just nobody was talking about it.

@efesell: I played Warcraft 1, I think, with friends via direct dial-up. After that, no real issues with playing Diablo 2 or Unreal Tournament with strangers.

I think my next exposure to playing via the Internet was the launch of Xbox Live. People were super chill, cool, and happy to be playing. People encouraged having fun and getting better. In general, people seemed happy to just be playing Mech Assault or Road to Castle Wolfenstein with people who shared the interest. It was really great.

Some time in the 360 generation, whether it was Halo 3, or Modern Warfare, things went straight to hell. Parties were both a blessing (you could hide from it) and a curse (everyone hid in parties, stopped talking, or stopped playing).

I’m a lasiez-faire guy, but I kinda hope the anti-toxicity thing at least cuts down on the bigot population. Though there are still all sorts if jackasses to sift through before folks can just talk and play games again...

...maybe I should look into Xbox clubs...

Best - The variety of and amount of games.

Worst- The "fans."

Best - the tech is fairly robust and advance enough to get the job done. The variety is nice, lots of new, different, and interesting things. There are lots of multi-layer discussion, approaches, and philosophy for people to discuss about games be it for their design choices, story, or gameplay mechanics.

Worst - People continue to be a shitshow. Players developing their own specific needs and niche lead to the inability to have something that could even be enjoy by "most." Ambitions are grander than ever, but executions stumble harder than ever. The money question is a problem with no winner except in small numbers. Games can and should be getting bigger, yet downsizing is seemingly the way forward.

DLC is a plauge upon video gaming. To nickel and dime us at every turn is a real shame, especially when hiding things that should've been in the game in the first place.

Fighting games are really upsetting with the way they have alternate outfits, some are unlockable in the game, others you have to pay for. It's confusing above all else.

I'd rather just buy it all at once than get hit up in a menu, especially when I think I've already bought everything.

Best: games are now more accessible to everyone, both to make and to play. The cost of development is lower, tools to create games are easier to get hold of and use, and people are more open minded about trying new things.

Worst: The harassment, vitriol, and entitlement that seems entrenched in gaming communities. As developers strive for transparency they also open themselves up to attack, and as we've seen increasingly over the last few years, there are many players out there who are quick to take advantage of that.

I guess both the best and worst aspects of gaming are largely due to it's symbiotic relationship with the internet. Being so heavily online-adjacent, and in some cases dependent, means it naturally attracts a lot anti-social behavior. Furthermore, many big companies have not enforced solid moderation policies, both in their games and forums, which has emboldened a lot of shitty behavior.

Best - The Internet

Worst - The Internet

Best - Don't have to configure sound drivers.

Worst - Everything else.

Best - accessibility of creation

Worst - toxicity and discrimination

Best: so much accessibility and so many options to play games wherever or however you like

Worst: single player (for the most part) games are taking the back seat for multiplayer or games as a service that require online modes. Couch coop was dead for awhile but I think the switch may help revive it.

Also, I miss the B level games. Large developers taking risks for those left field games that were so prevalent during the ps2/ Xbox days.

Worst: Most of AAA games are open world.

Best: Graphical and sounds fidelity have gotten to the point where games can be about anything and be set anywhere...

Worst: Modern games are NEVER about anything interesting or set anywhere fascinating.

Best? A vast majority of games, new and old, are easily available to anyone with a halfway reasonable internet connection. There are a lot of missing entries, but for the most part you can get anything working, especially on a good PC.

Worst? See, there are a handful of things I can put in "best". But it feels like there are a ton of things I can put in worst. From DLC to microtransactions to modern gaming being dependent on the internet just to get your game in complete working order, there's a lot of bullshit around gaming. And then there are things that devs/publishers have less control over but could do more stuff about, like toxic communities and legacy games being unavailable due to copyright laws or just no chance to profit from bringing them to modern hardware. I don't really know what I want to put here.

As an aside, it's kind of cool that pretty much any game you buy these days is just going to work on a technical level, but I'd almost rather have broken-ass AAA games that try something other than "follow the leader" multiplayer shooters or "open-world" Ubisoft-style activity-fests. But that's fine. We do still get big games that try new stuff. This is why Bethesda has been in the critical spotlight recently - Doom and Prey and Dishonored are the kinds of games that few AAA publishers want to even think about these days, yet Bethesda has done some good stuff with those franchises this generation. I don't doubt that their shittier practices will wear away that favor at some point in the next few years, but for right now people seem to hold them in higher regard than they used to.

Best: Games as a service. Games I love to play constantly have new content. Years ago a 2 year old game felt really, really old. Now a two year old game still feels fresh and relevant. I play more older games then I do new ones.

Worst: Games as a service. There's too many games that I want to play and too little time. I can't just stick with one or two, and with new games constantly coming out all these updates are overwhelming. Also the micro transactions can be a pain.

Best: Game play mechanics, graphics, and sound are better now than ever and continue to get better as technology improves

Worst: Despite better production values, games aren't as interesting or well-written as in the past, with few exceptions (See: Hollywood movies)

Best: Games are slowly becoming a more acceptable hobby in society. Most games feel like they have enough content to justify a new game sale price. Longer play time because of the internet that allows for content to still be made months or even years after release. Developers listen more to what fans want and have the responsibility to address toxic communities or practices.

Worst: AAA gaming feels pretty same-y and overall feels way too corporate at times. When there's a smaller team making a game, it's easier to see the vision of what a creative director or lead wanted to portray in their game. Now games can be so massive, they can feel like they have identity crisis because the producer for sure wants this aspect of the game emphasized while the developer may want something else.

exactly what I wanted to drop

Best: The rise and huge amount of open world games and games with rpg elements or a comeback of crpgs. All of them are my favorite things. I know this opinion seems to be very unpopular but I'm so happy this has been a trend.

Worst: Probably the rise gamergate, toxicity, harassment online and irl etc. While toxicity has always existed in gaming, I feel like with the coming of the internet it grew to even larger proportions and a ton more shit came out of the woodwork. Of course such things are not exclusive to the gaming industry but it's still one of the worst things. I'm glad that there's a lot of people fightning against all that garbage and things are very slowly becoming better and the industry more progressive and inclusive but there's still lightyears of work ahead sadly.

Best: Digital downloads. No more phone calls and forty minute drives trying to find the game you want.

Worst: No more Suikoden, Shadow Hearts, single player Phantasy Star, Grandia, etc... At least we still have Atlus and Falcom to carry that JRPG torch.

Best: You can pick up almost any mainstream game at random and expect a high base level of quality.

Worst: Everything around games, dlc, micro-tansactions, exploitation of patches, toxic people from either side.

People have already said my thoughts so I'll try to be original.

Best: Pervy games on Steam. I kinda feel as though they, specifically the visual novels, paved the way for both niche and big budget Japanese games to make their way on to Steam.

Worst: Pervy games on Steam. As shameless as I am, even I have my limits, and 95% of those visual novels go beyond my limits. Also, I like games that you can actually play, not awkwardly try to read a text box with nipples in my periphery. Anime has me covered on that several times over. I don't necessarily need it in my games too.

Patches and... Patches (which I'm also kind of looping in DLC as a plus and minus).

Patches allow for a developer to work on a game as long as they can and even make changes to a game after release based on feedback.

Developers can also launch a game before it is ready with the hopes of quickly patching issues that should have been caught before release or make changes to the game that fundamentally break the experience in one way or another.

Patches really aren't the best or worst thing in gaming but is a thing I am torn on.

Best: The variety and accessibility of games. This includes everything from indie developers to the multiple platforms we can buy them on including digital and not digital games. It has created such a wide breadth of new experiences of games and allowed those types of new experiences avenues to reach people. Its opened a whole new world of games that wasn't there before and I don't think we can overlook just how big of a difference this has made.

Worst: All after purchase money sinkholes. Anything from games a service, to dlc platforms, to loot boxes and so forth. Its horrible. I feel it used to be so much better when you would get an actual expansion pack a year or more later with a chunk of new content. Unless done right (See HITMAN) piece meal DLC or additional purchase in game just more often than not ruin the experience and take you out of the world that you are supposed to be delving into.

Best: Modern gaming has become what I day-dreamed about as a kid. Well, kind of. I remember playing those 16 bit and 32 bit games back in the day and thinking, "man... imagine if this pyramid was 3d and looked like real life and you could ride around it on a camel!" Five year old me would have looked at Assassin's Creed: Origins and stared in awe. Now, I didn't dream about loot boxes, "micro" transactions that can often accumulate to hundreds of dollars in short order, timed events, and the other myriad quirks of modern gaming... but still, this era has been good to me.

Worst: The politics. All the miserable, ignorant politics. I'm not blind; people aren't any worse now than they were in the past. There were always extremists on the left and the right that would happily freak out over any perceived slight or grievance. There was always bias in every news outlet and I doubt a truly neutral, centrist journalist has ever existed in the history of mankind. It was just easier to ignore back in the day because the internet was still in its nascent phases. Now, it's the same rubbish as in yesteryear but on big, digital soap-boxes. Everywhere you turn, someone is offended by something and using some social media outlet or journalistic bully pulpit to loudly proclaim how offended they are and spout dehumanizing language to assail the reputations and moral credibility of any cretin who dares disagree with him/her/whatever. Turn aside from such said madness and you'll find an equal but opposite lunatic on yet another podium prattling off the polar opposite opinion, replete with equivalent dehumanizing language regarding their opponents. It's... well, exhausting. I have neither the time nor the energy to hate so many people and things with such fervor. These movements and counter-movements and counter-counter-movements ask too much of me.

It's gotten to the point where I've started disengaging from the gaming community and the hobby's websites. I've unsubscribed from every gaming news website, including this one. I've ditched every gaming news forum, save this one... which I frequent every now and then when I want to talk to someone about this hobby that I've had for the past 28 years. Even then, I'm centrist and middle-of-the-road on almost every issue, and the over-arching opinion here (and elsewhere) seems to be that anything that isn't left or right is actually no opinion at all. I hold my tongue most of the time, which makes coming here every other week for socializing about games kind of... ironically pointless?

Frankly I wish this industry, and this world in general, had more Vinny's. Not to creep Vinny out, but I think about him when I see uproars from the left and right about Cyperpunk 2077, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Doom: Eternal, and so forth. I'm sure Vinny has a political bend, but he's such a gentleman about it. It's not a bully pulpit for him, and he articulates his thoughts with such grace. His awkwardness during every hottest mess debate demonstrates the empathy that I wish more people had towards each other. Missing out on him and Dan may be the one regret I have about canceling my subscription here.

Oh well.

Best: the accessibility

Worst: gamers. The self entitled jack offs complaining to every developer about some tedious crap they already know ain’t gonna get answered just so they get something more to complain about. Video games has the worst fucking fans of anything, and between the fans and the costs of making in’s games atop the whole uncertainty of jobs in the business it’s astonishing we are getting games at all.

Best: So many good to great games for damn near anyone's preference.

Worst: Too many open world games with boring mission design. It was fun when GTA III first hit, but unless your gameplay's top notch then you need something besides "go here and drop off a thing."

Worst: The community (no offense guys!)

Best: The community (let me explain)

There's so much potential for gaming. Art is supposed to bring about empathy and games are interactive. I basically stopped playing multiplayer shooters that aren't co-op. My reasoning might seem petty, but I don't want to make it so that I may have ruined someone's fun experience or have myself get, say, teabagged and get called slurs. We're naturally competitive as humans, but if you want my uncensored opinion, it's not a good trait to have unless in a playful environment. I applaud Nintendo for Splatoon for creating such an environment for competitive shooters. Something like Call of Duty where you can have toxic taunts that the characters spew out isn't something I'm interested in anymore.

Nier Automata was the right step for this kind of social interaction, but I can't go into it w/o spoiling it. I've met most of my friends while gaming and we all know the toxicity it can bring.

Best: the technology that allows the most brave fantasies to become the amazing game

Worst: the technology that can fool people

Other people

Best: There are some many games and so easily available.

Worst: The way AAA games have embraced grind, multiplayer, and monetization. I'd love to play a AAA game that told a solid story with fun mechanics over a 15-25 hour campaign, which was the focus of all development resources, and when it was over that was it. But that kind of game basically doesn't exist anymore in the AAA space. Even AAA games that are primarily single player and have easy-to-ignore monetization, like AC: Origins, are still massive grindfests to actually get through, filled with pointless side quests and dumb collectables.

Best: the choice, you can find something you'll like. In any genre, for any device.

Worst: You can miss out on something really good, if it's not super popular. (Choice, again)

Best: Lots of good games!
Worst: The communities.

For me personally,

The Best: Accessibility of Games

I like to play past gen as well as current gen games and it's just better than ever when it comes to the availability of older games, legally, digitally. It's still not perfect, a lot of licenses are tied to companies that don't care about games or publishers that don't see any potential for profit but overall it's pretty good atm.

The Worst: Games as Services

Again, this is for me personally. I don't think games as services is necessarily bad. But for me, I just like my single player games that I can complete a "finished" version of and move on to the next one. Connected/GoS games don't really give a crap about games as a piece of work, it's always evolving, always meant to keep the players playing and hopefully spending money. So many games, even a lot of last gen games, when I try to play it these days will try to connect to a server that no longer exists. It often takes way longer than necessary to actually play the game 'cause it wasn't important for developers to think about someone that might try to play their game past a certain period. Even worse, some games will just not be accessible at all.

Best: the games are great

Worst: I simply just don't have the time.

Best: Some video game characters feel like real beings with emotions and desires.

Worst: Expensive DLC that never gets discounted.

The best - Some are great.

The worst - Some are bad.