What's one thing that you wish you could bring back from the gaming industry that is missing today?

Mine would be AAA PC exclusives I miss the days where devs would take there time to create a high end PC game with no restrictions and take advantage of current PC tech here some games that did this back in the day Far Cry, Half Life 2, Battlefield 2, F.E.A.R. Crysis ect..

Demos.

Good Nintendo home consoles

Proximity chat.

Arcades for the kiddos

Cheat codes.

RPGs - with customizable party members, party armor, expanded skill tree and proper pausable combat.

The kind that didn't cost $2

VMUs.

Smaller development teams that are more easily managed, make games faster and don't have to chase the latest graphical milestone to put out a new game.

Oooooh MAN! Yes please. It was so cool in Halo 2 and Splinter Cell. The problem is that most people are either in parties now a days and the ones that aren't are generally obnoxious assholes.

Non-standardization and peoples attention span.

I hate that even guys like the Bomb Squad have lost their appreciation for learning how a game works and not having your hand held the entire time. It seems like if a game doesn't play exactly like every other game and isn't streamlined to an inch of it's life nobody will give it the time of day.

Certainty that the PC versions of all AAA games actually worked.

Turn based JRPGs, it's my favorite genre and there's not nearly as many anymore. I just got World of Final Fantasy and I love that it's just a simple ATB system like the older games.

Large expansions that take longer than two hours to complete. While short DLCs are okay to tell self-contained stories or to experiment with established gameplay mechanics they often feel like a rip off to me (lookin' at you, Arkham Knight...).

The industry having no idea what would work and what wouldn't.

The sense of mystery behind gaming myths and easter eggs that you don't get anymore, because games can just be data mined.

I remember being part of a GTA San Andreas myth hunter website and boy did we have fun organizing long sessions investigating specific myths and eaaster eggs, and how to initiate certain events and what not. Ton of fun discovering and wondering how far down the rabbit hole of those went. Connecting the dots to all sorts of clues and what not.

Being in a hive mind age has some draw backs =p

@fezrock: lol if you only knew how much better it's gotten over the years.

You can't bring back something that was never there in the first place. If anything, ports have gotten better over time. It's just more often that the games themselves that are busted across all platforms.

Risk taking from large publishers. Everything has to be a hit so they can't do anything that might hurt the bottom line.

This right here. I'll take worse graphics in exchange for teams being able to put more time into other areas of the game. It'll never happen though, can you imagine the shrieking from people? "I DON'T CARE IF IT'S MECHANICALLY BETTER IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY I DIDN'T PAY $$$$$$$ FOR A FUCKMASTER GTX60000 MURDERBOT EDITION GPU TO PLAY A GAME THAT LOOKS LIKE IT WAS MADE 2 YEARS AGO"

Feels like a generic answer, but I'd also have to go with more risk-taking from publishers, small to large and everywhere in between all across the world. I say this because as much shit as people give the Ubisofts and EAs of the world, there's a lot of smaller, but notable Japanese studios who are just as "guilty" as being risk-averse.

Creative modding. Back in the 90's people did really fascinating stuff with mods, often stretching the engines to do stuff they were never intended to.

While mods have had a comeback in recent years thanks to stuff like Steam Workshop, I feel what modders are allowed to do is too tightly controlled by the developers or Steam nowadays. Much of it is just limited to either making skins, maps or models, but not combining it all (or god forbid accessing lower level stuff) into making total conversions.

I've heard some good stories about Sea of Thieves and how you can use it to trick the enemy team.

I was gonna say smaller budgets, but same thing. The publishers would never make a game like MGS2/3 today, sadly.

Couch co-op. We've had a great string of indie couch competitive games recently (Nidhogg, Duck Game, Towerfall, uhh, there's a whole bunch) but nothing in the co-op area. I need something like the first Toejam & Earl.

And echoing the sentiment in here: smaller scale games that are released timely and in working order. Spectacle is fine, but it doesn't have to be everything. Indie devs are becoming more consistent than big studios, and often these days 'pixel art' is just as impressive as 4K, high resolution textures.

B-Tier games. Those "Singularity" and "The Saboteur" type of games. They didn't have the most cutting-edge graphics, so they tried wild stuff.

Now games either feel like they are multi-million dollar, huge projects, or yet another pixel-art indie.

We thankfully still occasionally get a B-game like "Let it Die" but the market's differently not there the way it was during the Xbox/PS2 to early 360/PS3 era which is a real shame.

I would say I miss unique control schemes. Now a days every game has a homogenized control setup, which makes it easier for people to pick up and understand a game but it also leads to games feeling like they all play the same. Say what you will about The Last Guardian's controls, but they feel different from everything else this year.

The spirit of the early gaming market especially in terms of developers and players have less firm notions on the "right" or "correct" way to do things in terms of design as well as a different sense of what players want. There were a lot of mistakes and clunkers to be sure but there were bizarre things that came out of the early PC and console scene that I really just don't see today (might just be a surfacing problem) even in the indie markets

Split-screen being a standard feature

Arcades

@topsteer: My favourite genre as well, but I don't think I've played since Lost Odyssey. The ones I've seen since then tend towards either obscurity or fanservice.

I've heard good things about World of Final Fantasy though, so let's hope Square takes it as a sign that there's indeed interest in games like that.

Games that work out of box. Tired of waiting ~hour to let a game install to play it, or sitting around waiting for a 10GB patch to download so I can play online.

Konami code like cheat codes

Absolutely. Given that they still produce demos for trade shows, I can't quite understand why there's so few of them out there.

Instruction booklets.

I like physical purchases to feel like an actual package. We don't really get that anymore. I remember last year The Witcher 3 came with a million inserts including stickers, a poster, a thank you note, and a sleeve. shit was insane. bless you CDPR

@frostyryan: i feel exacty the same way. I used to love it when they had the story of the game and other goodies in the intruction booklet. And yeah, all the stuff that came with The Witcher 3 was incredible.

An almost non stop slew of abysmal Movie tie-in games.

Impossibly hard games.

Game of the Year recap videos with fun skits.

My smile.

Yesss, same. I really miss fun just for the hell of it cheats too. Big head mode, people having dumb shit on their heads, low gravity, whatever. You get away with some of this on PC games if you can do console commands who people mod it, but that's about it.
I always figured achievements killed the cheat code. People started taking them very seriously, and then it was a rule that you couldn't earn one if you had cheats on and games started having them less and less.

And as others have mentioned, demos, especially on PC, I just want to know if your game is going to work without downloading anywhere between 20 to 50 gb and crossing my fingers. Specs are nice, but computers can be finicky beasts and it would be nice to have a couple GB demo to download just so I know.

@kindgineer: This gets said a lot and I feel like people are either looking back with rose colored glasses or just weren't around before patches became the norm.

Games have always had bugs/glitches in them. The only difference is now they can be fixed. While I dislike the idea of pushing a huge day 1 patch it's better than the alternative of a permanently buggy game.

Not just one company getting the "sports" licenses. I want to go back where there were two or three WNBA, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, FIFA games that had the correct rosters and names. Also, the NCAA and the athletes totally decimated good college games by fighting each other so much... which is a shame. We would even settle for a WELL CONSTRUCTED game where there was an easy way to make custom rosters with - names, stats, and art in one file

I agree, but I want to emphasize that I want the fun cheat codes to come back. The ones I do see are standard cheat codes I'd expect like getting all the weapons, add unlimited resources in a strategy game, etc. I want to see the weird cheat codes like paintball mode, big head mode, moon physics, and stuff like that.

I would love to revert back to a time where Steam wasn't flooded with shovelware and asset flippers. If I was looking forward to 2017, I would enjoy having other games on different platforms outside of Steam and while GoG is good. It still lags behind on certain game genres that I enjoy.

Demos were very helpful, I really do miss those.

I'd also like to see cheat codes like San Andreas. Not simply god mode and infinite ammo but fun stuff like cars with zero traction or low gravity, etc etc. Also just put them in a menu or small button combinations (though I'd vastly prefer a menu).

Cheat Engine is useful and some tables are crazy, but it's not always consistent.

I'll keep harping on this until I get satisfaction.

Sierra-style city builders.

Not a whole lot. Games have been evolving with the years and I can't think of a lot of things that I would want to necessarily bring back from years past. I mean yah, I loved Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, and think everything that Bethesda has released under that name is terrible.. but at the same time I don't know if I'd actually want another old ass isometric RPG? Maybe if it was really amazing? I don't care about cheat codes and while demos would be neat to see if my PC can handle something or not, they're not a deal breaker.

I'm actually with Vinny on this one - there has never been a better time to play videogames.

@liquiddragon: Oh I remember what it was like way back in the day, but from around 2010 to 2014 (or thereabouts) it seemed like developers had nailed down the whole 'PCs are different!' thing. But its all fallen apart again in the past two years.

I feel I have to point out all of those games had console releases, and there are quite a few games that push pcs to the limit in the same way.

But anyway i would say arcade games that could only be ran at an arcade. There is just something missing from the culture now that everything runs better at home.

Games being finished on release with no need for performance patches, and glitches were just part of the game.

The time when you didn't have to pay extra money for costumes and characters and everything was included with the full price. Usually as unlocks that encouraged continuous and repeat playthroughs.

Bring back the time before everything was streamlined into an open world quest fest. When controls were always different which lead to beautiful and terrible gameplay and control schemes, games felt unique and innovative.