Graphics are improving but has gameplay peaked?

If you look carefully, most of the games considered the pinnacle of their respective genre were released a while ago.

Adventure: Ocarina of Time, A Link To The Past, Uncharted 2, Batman Arkham Asylum, Metroid Prime

Fighting: Street Fighter II, Street Fighter IV, Soul Calibur, Soul Calibur II, Tekken 3

FPS: Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Halo, Goldeneye, Doom

JRPG: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX, Persona 4, Dark Souls

WRPG: Deus Ex, Mass Effect 2, Planescape Torment, The Elder Scrolls IV, The Witcher 3

Hack and Slash/Beat'em up: God of War 2, God of War 3, Ninja Gaiden Black, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta 2

Open-World: Batman Arkham City, GTA III, GTA Sand Andreas, Red Dead Redemption, GTAV

Platform: Super Mario World 2, Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario 64, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2

Puzzle: Tetris, World of Goo, Portal, Portal 2, Lemmings

Racing: Gran Turismo, Gran Turismo 3, Forza Motorsport, Burnout 3, Project Gotham Racing 2

Sports: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, SSX Tricky, SSX 3, ESPN NFL 2K5

Stealth: Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Thief: The Dark Project, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 3,

Strategy: Starcraft, Starcraft II, Civilization IV, Age of Empires II, Warcraft 3

Survival Horror: Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4, Dead Space, Silent Hill, Eternal Darkness

TPS: Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, The Last of Us

- I chose these games based on a small research I made. I gathered data from Metacritic, Gamerankings and other sites including user polls and independent top lists and these are some of the games that came most frequently. I definitely may have omitted some but I mainly took the most popular and acclaimed games. My method is not definitive or comprehensive so there will be disagreements.

- Only 7 games released in the past 5 years were often found on these lists. GTA V wouldn't even be there if not for its ridiculous Metacritic score as I've yet to see it in any user poll or top list. In the past 10 years some names that don't appear but scored extremely well include Halo 3, Assassin's Creed 2 and GTA IV.

- GTA IV for some reason is now frowned upon. On Metacritic, it has the largest difference between score and user score of the past 15 years after Little Big Planet. It is also more often than not, outranked by GTA SA and GTA III on top lists.

- Also notable are traditional fighting games. Aside from Soul Calibur II and Street Fighter IV, no game released in the past 15 years managed to score over 90 on Metacritic/Gamerankings. The highest scoring period is 1999-2005.

- Another surprising fact is Dark Souls which despite having the lowest aggregated scores of the games mentioned, made top lists far more frequently than many other higher scoring games.

- Silent Hill didn't score particularly high but is the game that most often topped horror games lists, right behind RE4.

- Mario dominates the platform genre.

- Overall games released between 1998-2005 populate most lists. It's only a 7 years time frame but almost 3 generations of consoles overlapped and 8 major home consoles were active during that span. Notable giants include Gears of War, Ocarina of Time, GTA San Andreas, Halo, Half-Life 2, Metroid Prime and many others.

- Many people claim games aren't what they used to be and based on this, it would seem they have an argument. It's not to say great games aren't continuously being made, it's just that the period we experienced from the late 90's to the mid 2000's was very high in terms of quality video games output.

So what's your take on this? Has gameplay peaked? Did we reach a point where we need to find a different method to play games(VR, motion controls, AR) in order to advance the medium?

Because people don't really want new stuff,they want the same old boring crap. See the top sellers.

Gameplay has peaked.... there's nothing really in terms of gameplay that can't be done on PS3/360.

Heck you could argue that theres nothing that really couldn't be done from a gameplay point of view on PS2/XB1

Gameplay hasn't peaked and what is "best" not dominated by sales.

I wouldn't say gameplay has peaked, but I would question how much of a jump can be achieved between the last two generations given they are relatively the same overall in what they can do. It also doesn't help when the market doesn't demand much out of developers.

I think VR will be a good step for gaming.

Probably. Though new ideas will always arise. And I believe gameplay isn't just how a shooter shoots, it's how it's paced, balanced, and how it progresses. Which is why Doom 1 and 2 still slay most FPS games today.

Gamers tend to reject new things so most devs play it safe.

Gameplay is evolving on PC not on consoles

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As long as motion control isnt part of it, im fine.

Gameplay definitely hasn't peaked but at the moment we are in a bit of a lull. If you ask me, the problem is that the ideas people are coming up with are for tech that simply isn't there. Motion control is still clunky as all hell, virtual reality needs a big bulky headpiece, physics calculations still need to work with dinosaur hardware. Mainstream online multiplayer was probably the latest major step forward, and now we're reaching a point where we need another, but no one is really able to achieve it with what's available.

Well bloodborne has the best RPG combat system ever and that was released last year so I would say no.

It's a difficult balance to try something new without alienating half your fanbase.

Yeah, people talk a good game when it comes to innovation, but they just want upgraded versions of what they have.

I'd still say it's the other way around. It honestly feels like graphics are reaching their peak. With games like Star Wars Battlefront and Witcher 3, Unreal, Star Citizen, etc. we are reaching what I foresee as the pinnacle. At least, in terms of high fidelity graphics and affordability. Of course games will always get prettier and allow more detail as new hardware appears and super good hardware now becomes cheaper due to superior hardware, but I still feel that in terms of "realistic" graphics we're getting to the point where it gets hard to topple over that peak.

As for gameplay, I'd argue that we definitely need more new avenues of playing games. People are constantly complaining about QTEs and cutscenes taking the immersion out, but the problem is is that it'd require an enormous amount of key controls for QTEs to become something more than a simple button press to do something really cool which will require more knowledge and researching before playing certain games. There'd also need to be more effort put in and just different and more creative ways of tackling games. This is why I feel that new "controllers" are great. Many are considered gimmicks, which is unfortunately due to the under-utilization of the technology offered, i.e. Wii U gamepad, heck even things like Kinect. There is of course, the fact that they aren't built in a way that allows developers to fully use them, but they are attempting to push the boundaries of how we play games.

graphics have far from peaked. The moment you cannot distinguish something from reality, then they are close.

As for gameplay, we have not peaked at all as well. There are so many multiplaying options and the good ones are not enough used.

Not to mention new tech is around the corner, like vr.

There's still all that Shit in the Division E3 build that isn't in the final game.

Gameplay has not peaked. There is so much that has not been done.

Back in the day if we wanted to play a multiplayer game with bots, you had several different types of bots to chose from. One of them, and I can't remember the name for the life of me, started out stupid running into walls and such. But if you left it running for a few days it would be the closest to a human opponent you could get at the time. The more you played with it, the more it learned and the better it got.

It makes me wonder why they haven't used the aggregate power of the cloud to do something like this with A.I., because lets face it A.I. still sucks.

A.I. doesn't suck, apparently just costs more money to do it right or devs just lazy:

Above boss, used to be one of hard ones stopped playing TERA iunno, anyway point is the guides for TERA's endhame bosses are pages long, each class brings sumtin diff. to the table, and yes typically these Raids have multiple phases and you can bet in this elitist MMO everyone was on Raidcall or TeamSpeak coordinating. There was probably 1 leader and then each party had a team leader. When boss 1st came out as usual 1st clear was prob 1hr long or more then as u get better gear, lean the mechanics, 10-20m runs. A.I. like this isn't for everyone and some actually prefer brain dead A.I. that wont kill you. Anyway, smart A.I. in videogames exists if you know where to look and when it's dumb devs purposely choose to make it so.

Nah modern game devs are just slacking because gamers are cool with less.

True enough for the most part, but No Man's Sky is bringing something new to the table with its procedurally generated world's. Of course that's been done before, but never on this game's scale. I've no idea if it'll actually end up being fun, but it's a cool and interesting use of today's tech nonetheless.

there is only so much you can do with the traditional popular already very functional and very effective styles of gameplay such as FPS, TPS, action RPG, turn base RPG, Hack and slash, fighters, etc.

Content in those games are more and more creative and you can do more than ever, but the basic gameplay is still there. And you cant really disconstruct that without having a cluster f*** of a game. Games like Mirros Edge, Portal, all them walking simulators, are just as basic and doing the samething as COD and Halo. Obviously some focus more on an element which makes it distinct, but the First person mechanics is the constant that you cant really mess with otherwise it wont work, or you have a different game, Third Person, etc.

Only thing gameplay can evolve drastically in is in VR (which is really only on the First Person genre). But we dont have the type of controls for it yet (not widely available and fully functional yet).

Im sure some Japnese devs will make something new, creative and unique gameplay, too bad most of them just do mobile games

@Juub1990: your basiclly asking if humans themselves have peaked

I see near constant attempts at evolving gameplay. It is not that gameplay stagnated at all, but rather that the average consumer prefers what is known, and every alteration of what they know, causes outrage.

So in a lot of ways gameplay has been forced to focus on the lowest common denominator in order to sell. If it is AAA? Chances are that you will see very few new things, and mostly just variations of systems we know well.

Added that that that most AAA games are series, and you very well can not alter gameplay too much, it is practlcally like changing genres in a movie series, most people will not think that is a good thing.

Games that does not require as many sales (and thus being easy for everyone and their dog to pick up and play), we DO see ideas fairly often. I am interrested in the wave of those huge space ship battle games, Space sims with VR alone was enough for me to preorder a Vive.

Someone brought up the souls games, and while I do NOT consider those games RPGs (closer to dungeon crawlers ala diablo) I DO consider them great games, and effectively an entirely new genre.

The modern Horror-Hide genre is effectively new, it is built on games like clocktower, but I would consider them a new sub genre to horror.

I think a part of it might be that when games started it was a blank slate, and a game was a game before it was a genre, now it often feels like a game is a genre before it is a game.

Gaming is renewed in VR. Things that would be considered mini games or simple tasks take on an entirely new dimension in Virtual reality. The way we experience games is about to change.

In a way, I agree with the OP. The controller or keyboard/mouse and a flat screen has been done. That's not at all to say that games can't bring a great story to life or have compelling gameplay, though. I don't think traditional gaming will go the way of the dodo. However, the possibilities for it are running dry from the perspective of new gameplay ideas or concepts. If we're a bit honest, things have reached a plateau since the PS2 era.

Wrong, gameplay for a lot of games improves with every generation, look at Gran Turismo compare the original PS1 game to GT6 on PS3.

The physics are on another level, and the amount of control you have over the car has improved not to mention graphics and weather and so on, the game not only becomes more immersive it also becomes a better simulation as a whole.

Think of computer hardware as a tool, the better the tools the better things people can make. But no matter how good the tool is if you have a monkey wielding it they are not going to make anything better.

Also I think you are confusing popularity at the time with over all quality.

Not really, game design is currently in its infancy, currently it is undergoing some growing pains with the budgets. But game design still has ways to go.

As psychologists learn more about the human mind and how to trigger the positive (reward) signals. I am sure clever game designers will take advantage of that knowledge and put it in their games.