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Same for games? quality of music peaks at age 17 and you begin to start hating any music made after you're 35

Do you agree?

  • Yes I hate new games, love old games

    Votes: 16 12.5%
  • No I love new games, hate old games

    Votes: 4 3.1%
  • I hate everything

    Votes: 22 17.2%
  • I love everything

    Votes: 86 67.2%

  • Total voters
    128

Loomy

Thinks Microaggressions are Real
My man. You don't like games anymore. That's fine. Do something else lol.
 
I'm sort of the opposite when it comes to music. Outside of a few select albums, I don't particularly care for the music that was around in my late teens. I'm always finding great new music, but I actively look for it. I also love a lot of music from decades before my teens.

I haven't kept up nearly as close on the gaming side. I went through a bad stretch of critically acclaimed yet very boring western developed games during the PS3 era (while also trophy hunting which made it 3x worse) and quit gaming for a few years afterward and now that I have a hectic work schedule it's been hard to recapture the full engagement level I once had despite some spectacular releases over the years that I'll never find the time to play.
 

mdkirby

Gold Member
No. I really struggle to play old games. Some age better than others tho.

Likewise with music, tho that’s more nuanced. I primarily listen to Synthwave that evokes a nostalgias for a 1980s that never happened. Within that too I will typically listen to just a single song on loop everyday for a month or so before finding a new one.

(In my 40s)

I do hate GAAS tho, and all this zoomer style games and aesthetics.
 

HerjansEagleFeeder

Gold Member
With music and film I constantly find new stuff that gets me excited, hitting 39 this year.

With regards to video games, you were smart to include the option "hate everything", OP. Because that's exactly where I am. Can't go back to most games from back in the day, because they didn't age well. Modern gaming is total dogshit for the most part for many different reasons as well. I guess I find good ones from all generations of gaming, but they're small in numbers. And these days most of it comes from third party, especially indies and Japanese studios.
 

Edgelord79

Gold Member
Nope music was objectively better in the 90s than now. It’s all shit now. All.of.it.

Edit. Added the /s as apparently it wasn’t obvious.
 
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I'm biased here, because I despise nostalgia, and nostalgia-driven people.

But dismissing this as "You hate everything new after ___ years old, because you have nostalgia for your stuff" is quite lazy, when there's the simple possibility that either music or gaming quality has taken a decline in some way or another. Or that they both need new "trends" or experimentation to help them evolve a bit more.

I don't have a horse in this race, because I like my games and music MILF or Fresh. Either is fine, and I know that to find the good stuff, I need to actual look for it.

If I played what Sony advertises the most, I would have the opinion that gaming sucks these days. (New) God of War is fucking boring, and the gaming equivalent of Adult Contemporary music. Spider Man is fucking boring, and overrated. Horizon Zero is aggressively mediocre.

The things that actually speak to you, gaming or music, need be searched for and found. OLD AND NEW

And the people that go "Everything sucks now, back in my day bla bla bla", are the people that aren't doing that. They are too lazy.

But they aren't representative of everyone that is critical of gaming today.
 
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midnightAI

Member
Basically, author is saying .... 'I don't like change'

Where the hell does he get music peaks when you are 17 from? Maybe you need to listen to some better music mate
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
Nope music was objectively better in the 90s than now. It’s all shit now. All.of.it.
Have you listened to every piece of music released to arrive in at that conclusion? Top 40 stuff is pretty shit these days, but there is still great music being made.
 

Durin

Member
I can see nostalgia affecting some people, but when it comes to media I think it's dependent on how engaged you are with it. If music was just a casual thing where you mainly listened to the top 40 artists of a year, I can see that person hating current day stuff because they'd just rather spend their limited time with the medium consuming the best stuff they grew up with.

I still find plenty of modern music I like, it's just not really the pop-heavy stuff that has over time become repetitive with obvious structures that get old. The nice part of the modern day is the barrier to entry to create music is low enough that other artist do interesting stuff, and the same is true with games. As AAA has become a repetitive bloated mess, AA games down to indie titles via digital distribution + middleware game engine tech have more than filled the gap for me in my late 30s.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
No, this is stupid.

Exactly. Nas is my favorite rapper, but I loved Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers especially because of it's maturity aligns with my maturity when I was 38 years old.

Gold2ndImageUntitledSession0886P-1copy_1024x1024.jpg
 

CLW

Member
I don’t agree with the before I was born lord of GREAT songs from the 50s - 70s

I will say all new music started to suck for me around age 30
 

Meicyn

Member
Nostalgia is a hell of a thing. There is a sea of trash in every generation, and some folks cherrypick the stuff they loved when it comes time to talk about their chosen bygone era and misremember what it was actually like.

Folks remember Super Mario World, but forgot Aero the Acrobat, Glover, and Bubsy. Folks remember Beat It by Michael Jackson, but forgot about the comically awful Superbowl Shuffle.



The reality is that there are more games and music to choose from than ever before, and the ratio of wheat to chaff is what it has always been. Before the Arkham Knight trilogy, Batman games kinda sucked. We all know it. The shelves of Blockbuster and K-Mart were full of middling games to rent or buy during our earlier years. Did anyone actually like Pit Fighter? Or Night Trap? Star Wars: Master of Terasi Kasi?
 

ShadowLag

Member
I love a good mix of old and new stuff. All eras have objectively good and objectively bad things. I think age and/or nostalgia is only rarely a factor for real in this; some people are just stuck in a brick-headed mindset, and sometimes stuff is just actually shit when compared to other things. Strangely, there are people who refuse to see faults in anything, and others who refuse to accept or try anything outside of a very narrow range of things.
 
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BossLackey

Gold Member
I know GAF topic creators loooooove to put things in convenient little boxes, but the truth is there is nuance. A gradient.

That's always been the case and it's always going to be the case.

I do not in any way agree with this tweet. When you love a medium for a long time, you generally become more discerning and critical. That is not the same thing as hating new things. There are new games I love just as much as I did when I first played Super Mario Bros. 31 years ago and had my mind blown.

For those in which this Tweet rings true, I'd wager it's a matter of lack of diversity in consumption. Be open to new things, seek out the unknown, and you will constantly be delighted. I've found that's the case for everything.
 
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ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
35? I'm 36 and I've hated 90% of new music after 2007

and as far as games go for me they peaked from 1989 to 2000 when I turned 13

after 2000 I went from playing almost everything to having to search around I was a big arcade/sega kid so 2001 on kinda sucked ass
 

Edgelord79

Gold Member
Have you listened to every piece of music released to arrive in at that conclusion? Top 40 stuff is pretty shit these days, but there is still great music being made.
Of course there is good music being made today lol. I didn’t think I needed to add /s to such a sweeping statement.
 
No. Games are all quantity over quality now, not to mention GaaS. No longer can we unlock skins, cheats or quite frankly simply have fun without having to pay an extra fee.

Nintendo still nails it and there are a few tittles that strike the right chord nowadays. But everything has become such a buggy nasty adhd riddled shit fest while other games try to be so cinematic that it affects gameplay. Contrast in games used to be a huge issue on the PS3/X360 days, Game Engines also use all these new techniques that cause ghosting and smudged out artifacts with the graphics and it’s jarring all in the name of 4K.

I mean shit, look at Battlefield 2 compared to the shit they’re pumping out now. It was leagues better. The netcode seemed better too. Now it looks great standing still, but in motion it’s ass.

When games came out back in the day they simply had to work, no updates or anything. They were rather crisp and clear, especially on PC.

Games now.. kind of suck.
 
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Isa

Member
I call bull. For those with taste that is. For the layman that follows the herd and only occasionally dabbles in hobbies or "entertainment" they might not gel with a new gen's approach to the medium. For us who delve deeper, some of us Abyssalnauts will continue to grow over time, discovering new genres, going back to things we once loved and finding new angles of approach(were they good, bad or flawed etc).

My tastes have only grown over time and narrowed in some ways as well, especially recently. When it comes to music for me personally it was an almost spiritual journey and in a way saved my life. I could live without games and such, but wouldn't ever go without music. I love what's releasing now albeit underground far away from the mainstream. I don't care, like what you like I'm not here to throw shade. But I hope people will offer that same sentiment.

So, for many folks I've seen throughout my life complain about the "new" or current year stuff, there have been a few who can't really put forth an eloquent argument as to why the new things are lesser or bad save for one or two examples. I could hurl an onslaught of critic at whatever I felt deserved it ala Razorfist since I can thankfully formulate my own opinions. Things of the past are interesting and had their time, and just as now there were plenty of problems and turds. As time ebbs ever onward so too does the tide that brings about new issues.

I personally think its a cultural issue that has taken the west by storm over the course of several decades. Most mainstream things are sadly lacking and have done so for a looooong time, and many people are well programmed to consume new thing, don't ask questions. People from older gens or those now aging up a segment might find themselves at odds with what is being pushed as "art" in any space. That's normal. But then again I've never been normal. So take my opinion with a grain of salt.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
The thing that these "it's just nostalgia" arguments ignore is that... well, what if the '90s and early 2000s really was a good time for games? What if things like faster pacing, less bloat, more emphasis on skill, and a willingness to experiment with risky concepts were actually virtues? These arguments act as though you're simply not allowed to believe that modern AAA games aren't better, because well... they're newer! And they spent a lot of money on them, and you can't just ignore the newest Ubisoft game because diversity is our strength.

No, fuck off.
 
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Sgt. Pinback

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
There is no 'nostalgia effect'.

What there is, is younger people who cannot abide the thought that they missed out on anything.

"Of COURSE we still have great music! Taylor Swift is even MORE popular than the Beatles! Things are just as good now!"

Things aren't as good now. We don't live in an era of 'great art'. We live in an era of cheap, fast food art that is often built around internet-powered monetisation models and 'engagement'. This doesn't mean that everything is horrible now. It means that, in aggregate, we are culturally worse off than we were 10, 20, or 30 years ago. There's still good games. There's just not as many, and they are highly disposable and transient.
 

Mobilemofo

Member
I love old shit, especially the 90s to early 2000s. I find myself open to new music and types. I know a good flow when I hear one, and that's what I like.

I am super adaptable tho. Be like water.
 
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Fbh

Gold Member
I think this applies mostly to the super popular stuff.
Like yeah, I enjoy the music that was popular when I was a kid/teen more than the music that is popular now . But that doesn't mean there is no new music being made that I enjoy.
It's a bit similar with games. I don't care about mobile games and most GaaS, which is the most popular stuff that makes the most money. But I still enjoy a lot of modern games.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
I love music that I just discovered, and the same can happen with games.

That tweet OP posted is stupid.
 

Thabass

Member
I think the whole "you don't like the music of today" does not happen with everyone...I love a lot of music today, but my tastes have changed for sure. I still love trance, EDM music, and all sorts of music in the video game space. Rap, however, is completely atrocious (in my opinion) except for a few artists, and I never liked country. Oh, god do I hate country....
 
Music started to die off for me around the mid to late 90's. Music just seems more commercialized these day. There is still good stuff out there, it's just harder to find.
Games still impress me.
 

Synless

Member
Maybe, but it didn’t hit until I was in my late 30’s. I think it’s less that and more like companies shifted to online games, FTP games and less dynamic single player games, which I mostly still enjoy.
 

Pejo

Member
There's great stuff to be found from all eras of gaming, today's no exception. I have less of a problem with the games themselves these days than I do the predatory monetization methods and various agenda being forced in to shape kids/teens thinking.
 

whyman

Member
No. In fact I’m tired of the stuff I listened to when I was 17. Some games were better in terms of tone and direction, but gameplay and graphics has improved. We just have to get back to being nerds and WW2.
 
There's always great content but dopamine doesn't hit the same when your older. That's just normal and part of life. So yeah while things did seem to be better 20-30 years ago, alot of is to do with age aswell. You can never bring back the vibrancy of youth and all the good that comes with it.
 

Švejk

Banned
Would anyone deny that rock and roll peaked in the 90’s?

Would anyone think that John Williams still produces masterpiece scores compared to the ones in the 80’s?

Would anyone deny that any recent Final Fantasy OST can touch any of the FF scores from 1994-2000? (Or any SE score during the PS1 era for that matter)

Techno/Electronica plateaued after 2010, where it starts to really start sounding the same (I here “inspirations” and blatant rips non-stop now.)

Country music simply can’t hold a candle to the whiskey bent cowboys from the 60’s to the 90’s. It’s evolved to rock/pop/rap country now, which is disgusting and completely lost itself as a genre.


But that being said, on the other hand, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t bad music back then… Heard allot of bad shit then too. The beauty of getting older and wiser though, you learn over time what is good and bad, even after a few seconds of hearing a sound. That’s not old man yelling at the clouds, that’s called taste refinement. Even the great Nobuo Uematsu just recently stated that game scores (specifically AAA most likely) just all sound all the same now, just like movie scores… Not sure how these incredibly meh composers keep getting chosen to do scores of late, like Inon Zur for games and Brian Tyler for movies… Holy shit can they not sound anymore generic and unmemorable.



So yeah… His analysis is debunked and confirmed to be dog shit. I bet he loves Taylor Swift and Cold Play though.
 
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Humdinger

Gold Member
Sounds about right. I think the operative factor is that (at least for me), when I was in my late teens and early 20s, I was really immersed in music. I listened to it all the time, took it very seriously, dissected lyrics, argued about bands with my friends, etc. Music was a huge part of my life. A huge part of my identity, even. So the music I grew up with got embedded in my spirit in a way that music that came later did not.

As I got older, I gradually lost interest in music. Other things (e.g., career) took priority. Music went to the back seat. At this point, it's an afterthought. My old music is stored away. I occasionally listen to a bit of it on a bike ride, but for the most part I don't bother. It takes my full attention, and I usually would rather put my full attention elsewhere. When I listen to music now, it's ambient stuff as background, and my focus is somewhere else (e.g., reading).

If you asked me what I consider the best music, I'd still say that old stuff I grew up with, though. Partly because I got into it so much, I learned to deeply appreciate some of it. Mostly because I'm out of touch with modern music, so I can't come up with good alternatives. What I hear coming out of car speakers usually sounds mediocre, and I think to myself, "What happened to music?" and then I think, "You sound like an old man." Which I may be. I'm sure there is good stuff out there, but it's probably not on the radio. Just like back in my day, you had to search for it -- and I don't have the inclination to go searching. So I'm not aware of it.

I realize my judgment about "best music" is subjective, but that's okay. My relationship with music is very subjective.

edit: The same is not true for games, though. That's because I wasn't into games when I was a young adult. I only got into them much later in life.
 
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bobone

Member
Absolutely not.
When I was 17 I was listening to classic rock that my parents listened to at 17 lol.
I also listen to a lot of music that is 200+ years old.
And I find new metal bands constantly.

For games, its very easy to feel jaded about modern offerings. They are undeniably less innovative and risk taking than previous generations.

Thinking of my top 10 games, I played them ages 7 (Doom), 10 (Pokemon), 12(Skies of Arcadia), then Skyrim and Dark Souls at 23. And Elden Ring was only 2 years ago.
So I don't think there is an age bias. At least for me.
 

Ian Henry

Member
I love both old and new. Quality is forever. As long the games or music is dope, I'm here for it.

Trash exists old and new. It ain't recency bias. Ya'll act like those 90s FMV games didn't exist back in the day and were at one point all the rage 🤮🤮🤮.
 

dave_d

Member
I'm almost 50.

Most games coming out today are largely objectively better than games released when I was 17 (1992). Some of my favorite games of all time released after I turned 35 (2010). I still play a good mix of old and new games, and have typically finished more than 52 games every year for the past 10 years.

The problem is that AAA games are releasing less frequently than they used to, due to massively bloated production times/cost. Studios are taking less and less risks with games. GaaS and forced multiplayer-only games aren't producing meaningful narratives most of the time. Most games are designed to be a time sink, rather than to be fun. Companies typically value user engagement over customer satisfaction / fun.

That being said, some AAA games released these days are pretty great. Final Fantasy Rebirth and Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth are two of the best games I've played in a while. Slightly older stuff like Ghost of Tsushima was incredible. AA is picking up the rest of the slack with games like Unicorn Overlord, Granblue Fantasy Relink, Robocop, and Octopath Traveler 2. Balatro might be the best game I've played this year, and it's an indie game that's like 100MB in size.

Gaming today is awesome. Ya'll are crazy if you believe OP's title to be true.
I'll second this given I'm 53. I look at most games from the 2600 and contemporary system as the equivalent of silent movies from before 1920. IE Almost all of them are so primitive to not be worth wasting your time with. (Scorsese was wrong about this even though he literally did a movie about it called "Hugo Sucks!") Loads of games have not aged well at all .(I loved Phantasy Star when it came out in 1988, that has not aged well at all.) Yeah I know, unpopular opinion.
 

Paltheos

Member
Can't say I've noticed this. Some slices of the industry, particularly western-developed games, have moved away from the melodic-centric style that I love so much and that dominated the entire market when I was a kid, but fantastic game music is still out there being created right now. It might actually be better now than it ever has been as some composers are willing and capable to use the full array of tools available to make fantastic tracks as opposed to the days of old consoles where they were limited by whatever a sound chip allowed or (relatively more recently but still pretty far back) the limited abilities of contemporary synthesizers.
 

nikos

Member
I appreciate and listen to music that was made way before my time and music that released yesterday.

I like new an old games.
 

ZehDon

Member
I'm 39 years old, and at least one of my favourite games of all time came out in the last four years. From my perspective, that doesn't seem to hold true for games.

The study seems kinda flawed because I'm not sure how they accommodated for discovering music after it was originally created. Technically, "new music" just means "new music to you". In theory, if I'm 36 and listen to a song I've never heard of from 1987, I should hate it. At least for myself, that's simply not true. I discover loads of new music that I immediately love from a whole host of years. I think this study has simply identified incongruent generational music trends. Sure, people from 1980 are less likely to enjoy music made in 2020 - but that might be because those styles are really unrelatable. That doesn't mean that same person from 1980 wouldn't like any new music from 1940, 2010, or even 1810 - it depends on the trends of the time and how relatable they are to one another. I don't think it's as simple as "new thing bad herp derp".
 
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darrylgorn

Member
No, music really does suck now. It isn't like our parents who couldn't grasp a rapidly evolving industry compared to their nostalgia goggles.

The music well has run its course because we've used up most of the good ideas already.

Games are on the same trajectory but we're not there yet. Movies and TV shows are close.
 
The stuff I like skews more to my youth than even 17. When I was 17 it was like Backstreet Boys and endless R&B. I'd say something like 1991-1993, age 10-12 or so was where it was at for me. Nirvana was blowing up, but all the awesome 80s shit was still kinda there. Great metal albums. Guns N Roses with the double album and a song attached to Terminator 2.... Yeah, that was the shit. I probably would have done great with the early 80s too with all the New Wave... I hadn't heard a lot of it back then, but love it when scanning the radio while driving.

I also like a lot of the 'oldies' of my parents' generation. Beatles, Beach Boys, etc...

Not a big fan of most of the 70s but there are some gems and I kinda love ABBA despite having no other use for the disco era.

I looked at the top 100 from when I was 27 as well and damn it was even worse than 1998.

So I don't quite fit the curve but... sounds about right. On average.

As for games, there were just so many technical limitations that are now largely gone. Now we're in the era of same-old-shit with slightly more polish and it's starting to show. The stuff that I spend my time playing was mostly released in the 2008-2017 range. COD on the early end and then transitioning to more competitive games with ranked matchmaking. And then Destiny 2, I probably would have been happier getting on WoW back in the day but it seemed like a potentially dangerous addiction. But I waste entirely too much time on Destiny 2 nowadays so I don't know.
 
Feel like I'm getting to that point with music at least. It didn't peaked at 17, but around my mid 20s, yea for sure. The problem is (and I know every generation says this), I just found new music today so unbelievably bad. And I don't even mean that from the standpoint of "music from my day is so much better". I loved music that I grew up with as a kid and teenager, and as mentioned that wasnt even my favorite. It was really late college into the first couple years of my career in which I enjoyed music the most. But besides that, I also loved music that came before my time, even if I don't enjoy as much as more "modern" stuff I still enjoyed it to an extent and respected/understood it. Music today, mainly in the hip hop scene is just nearly unlistenable for me.

As for games, I don't really feel like it peaked for me. Kind of enjoy each era for what it has. Each Gen has some down years, and some great years. Like if I were to make of my top 20 or so favorite games of all time, I feel like I would have an equal amount of games of each Gen going back to the PS1 generation.
 
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