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Note -- I had RPGs in mind when writing this but I suppose it can apply to any table top game.

"It hasn't held up over the years."

This kind of statement comes up in nearly any conversation about games published in the 70s or 80s. The assumption seems to be that games wear out or otherwise don't measure up over time. Is that because people get tired of playing them? I don't think that's the intended sentiment. Rather, this is a kind of Whiggish history of game design. Just as the modern believes science is always approaching Truth, the critique of games aging poorly seems to assume that design should always and mostly does approach the Ideal Game.

But there is no Ideal Game, at least in universal terms. There are simply games that are more or less fun relative to a given group of people. It stands to reason therefore that games do not actually age at all. Rather, gamers age; that is, our expectations about games change. That change in turn is shaped in part, maybe a large part, by marketing forces. For folks who play D&D, the strongest such force has been the drive to generate product where an important element of product is rules.

This is not to say that experience playing games has no bearing on a designer's ability to create fun new rules. But this is a more specific matter: the development of a preference for published material over what is generated in the course of play. The history of D&D's rules reminds me of Stephen Jay Gould's punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution with each successive official Edition a proverbial Cambrian explosion of rules. I think many gamers (both young and old) have confused the fact that this pattern is logical with the notion that it is natural and subsequently, via the naturalistic fallacy, with the notion that it is desirable, i.e., that more explicitly deterministic rules are superior to ones that rely on interpretation by players.

What do you guys think when people say such-and-such game is somehow deficient because it was published X decades ago? Do you find yourself saying that kind of thing?

I always took it as a quality of rules writing vs modern games or playability after having played newer games. This flows with your idea of gamers age: As we play more and more systems, many of them newer, we adjust what we view as ideal for us as individuals and hold older/past systems to that new standard.

It still boils down to a matter of preference, of course, as on the flip side, there are some who hold an older system(or rather, their flawed/biased memories of them) as the standard in which to judge things, regardless of what they've experienced since, ad often declare that they don't make games like they used to. In many of those cases, however, replaying that favored game/version will often bring about a different experience than they remember, bringing about the idea that it hasn't "aged" well, as it no longer holds up to its own ideal that the player remembers.

I'd say yes games do age at least in the perception of gamers,

ie could I sit down now and have as much fun as I did back then

for a combination of at least 3 reasons (and I'm sure I'm missing some)

1. People and cultural expectations change, what was once fun may not be seen as fun in 20-30 years time, or may just end up seeming silly (sigh, cyberpunk you died so young)

2. New more fun stuff may happen, even if a game was brilliant if a new game in the same niche is developed it will probably displace the old

a good example of this is the large number of strategy games(boards & tokens to simulate 'battle') like chess that have developed and faded over time, Chess and Go still remain, many others have died

3. As you point out the curse of wanting to sell more new stuff to players... The more extras, new rules, add ons etc that appear the more likely things are to 'break', either because the whole thing becomes too complex, because players fragment into edition ghettos, or a series of mediocre expansions ends up killing enthusiasm for the game. The more complex the game the more they are at risk

I do find some stuff dated (even if it is still in print),

for an RPG example I find Rifts mechanics have dated really badly despite enjoying playing it when it first appeared (1990ish if I remember right) although the crazy mixed up background has held up OK

On the other hand something like Call of Cthulhu pretty much had itself perfected by 3rd edition (mid 1980s), I still find it as playable now as it was then (in fact the only reason to buy later editions would be to be able to use newer materials)

There's a sort of 'fashion' for gaming that changes over time. For a while people are trending to deep, complex games, then they want lighter, easier-to-play games. In this sense, games definitely age.

Also, like media, games need to be given some consideration to the era. Palladium infamously used an outdated and aged chart of possible insanities for what was probably a bit too long. I think the chart may have been based on an outdated medical text to begin with and, in Palladium style, was cut & paste between books several times before being removed or updated. This is a particularly bad example, but a lot of games are tied tot he era as well.

A lot of 'oWoD' games (Old World of Darkness) are shining examples of the game design philosophy of the era, with packed release schedules. It's now very common for a game line to get a half dozen books over several years and be considered 'done' instead of the monthly release of previous eras.

I know I have piles of RPGs (and a few games like Car Wars) I will probably never play again and should start weeding out. Rifts is a prime example: The system feels very clunky compared to a bunch of other games I could grab, and the setting is a fun but somewhat ridiculous 80s album cover mish-mash I'm just not into these days.

Games do age in my opinion. Some are more timeless than others (Call of Cthulhu, as mentioned above) but the improvements in production values, organization, tools, and such means I'm much more likely to want to run a newer game.

Rifts was never good. It was only exciting and I'll admit, without conceding that games age, that excitement only lasts so long.

Yes, they do in my opinion. Though it's a computer game, MYST is a great example in my opinion. It was pretty much revolutionary as a puzzle game when it came out, and even came with a journal for writing down clues.

Now a days, that level of puzzle is built into most RPGs and adventure games as standard, and MYST is ridiculously easy- beatable in a few hours without any stress.

Similarly, in the miniature gaming world, there have been a wave of more complex and very tight rules games that have made a lot of older games look very simplistic and/or sloppy by comparison.

I think they do. Or perhaps can would be a better term. They get more streamlined oftentimes, or more focused. As much fun as I had with both, I think 40k 1st and 2nd Ed have both aged. RT for the Miniatures vs RPG-lite elements, and 2nd Ed for the Herohammer elements.

Likewise, in a different genre, but EverQuest 1 has aged terribly. I'm not talking about graphics, but the mechanics of the game

That's kind of a hard question. I don't think the statement "hasn't held up well" means anything. There's nothing inherently bad about older games, just like there's nothing inherently good about newer games (implying that to be the case, or the opposite way around, is known as "chronological snobbery". There's your rhetoric lesson for the day).

I'd just say that games made at different times in history have different design goals/ideals. Those ideals may or may not be aligned with what someone living in the modern day currently wants.

That said, there are some times where people just release a horrible system and later designers note its mistakes and improve on it. Sometimes the first stuff really does just stink, because nobody has any idea how to do it the first time around.

Many forms of writing can show age through their topicality or lack thereof. The cultural context in which they were written grows increasingly different from the one in which new players (or even old players who've lived through the ensuing time) are encountering it. I think this is particularly obvious in the case of science fiction or future-setting games, where the writers' predictions about the future become increasingly divergent from what actually did happen, and concepts about political and technical developments can rapidly make the assumptions of the game appear silly. Cyberpunk (as a near-future setting) was mentioned before, but other games like Traveller and such can also be subject to this.

Fantasy games are generally not subject to that issue, but as people like Orlando and Balance mentioned, there are still "fashions" or trends; contexts in which games are published. The expectations of the market and of gamers today are certainly different than they were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. Back when D&D was originally published, for example, wargamers were generally open to a very DIY aesthetic from games, as so many were self-published by guys operating out of basements or garages using typewriters and mimeographs. With the easy availability of word processing and desktop publishing resources now, people are of course less tolerant of boks which are badly laid-out, poorly organized, and contain confusing wording. They have greater expectations of clear and attractive presentation.

As for the mechanics of a game themselves, I think those are more timeless, but still subject to different perception and reception based on the audience's background. If a retroclone takes the rules for an old edition of D&D and just repackages them in a clearer, better laid-out format, that will certainly make it more accessible to most gamers, but how the mechanics themselves are received is still going to be impacted by what other games they've played (including computer and video games) in the past. Influences which were much different than those of the gamers who first read and played with those rules.

With fantasy, too, there's the question of what other fantasy media the reader/player has consumed which shape their sense of what a fantasy world "should be", which in turn affects how they accept a rules set, in terms of how it does representing the world those gamers expect to see and play in. As a lot of old-school gamers have noted, Gygax & Arneson's original rules do a better job representing a sort of rogueish, picaresque type of adventure and adventurer than they do the more Campellian epic hero that many fantasy fiction readers have become accustomed to in reading works published in the last few decades.

Balance wrote:There's a sort of 'fashion' for gaming that changes over time.

This really sums it up, I think. Just like with clothes and music, new generations of gamers turn into designers all the time, influencing and driving the trends. This may leave some people behind, who like certain older games just like some people like music from the 80s or 90s more than current pop, either because they have fond memories connected to the time or because the style just suits their personal preferences.

After having tried about a dozen contemporary rulesets that have fully embraced the "complexity is good" design philosophy, I'm currently finding myself drawn towards simpler rulesets that present a sort of "back to the roots" approach to P&P, minimising the size and coverage of the rules, the abstraction placing greater responsibility into the hands of the GM and demanding more involvement of the players, but simultaneously rewarding them with a much faster flow plus easier modification.

Similarly, games can evolve in terms of background, too. Some settings such as Battletech or Shadowrun feature an ever-expanding timeline that directly influences how the world looks and feels. Fortunately, settings are relatively easy to pull up for a game today, and can even be mixed with more modern rules. For example, my group is currently thinking about trying the new SR5, but have the campaign take place in the 2050s with the wired matrix and large decks etc. I guess it just feels more cyberPUNK that way, compared to the later eras that look much more like Deus Ex or some other less unique sci-fi 'verse, ironically in spite of more and more stuff like new species being pumped into the setting.
All that's still missing for us is the hardcover release of Shadowrun 5E ... come on, Catalyst ... come oooonnn ...

of course games age all things do, the question should be do they age well.

I think games with a modern or near future setting have bigger problems with aging than others as they have to deal with our ever changing society and tech expectations. As well as clunky rule sets or poor thought out settings.

to me the old WOD stuff was great for years and the complexity of the different factions made for a very interesting world to play in. But playing it now just doesn't seem to work and 2nd and 3rd edition of shadowrun suffered the same fate. Not due to any flaws in the rules but our expectations have moved forward.

I still enjoy playing MERP even though the tables can get very cumbersome the world is well fleshed out and easy to immerse yourself into. FASAs star trek is still a favorate of my group too.

I think games like rifts only really appeal to teens which is when I was playing it looking at it now the whole thing seems unnessesary.

Yes.

See: many early rpgs that made women weaker than men, often without any particular advantage to counteract it (if it did, it was usually wisdom, often relegating women to healer roles). For example, an early version of DnD limited women to 18/50 strength with no statistical advantage to counter it (men could be up to 18/00). It was stupid, and times have moved on to better places.

 Melissia wrote:
Yes.

See: many early rpgs that made women weaker than men, often without any particular advantage to counteract it (if it did, it was usually wisdom, often relegating women to healer roles). For example, an early version of DnD limited women to 18/50 strength with no statistical advantage to counter it (men could be up to 18/00). It was stupid, and times have moved on to better places.

That rule was stupid, but it was also an extremely stupid edge case in general where the decision was made that for one class the rules would subdivide one step in the (course-grained) attribute scale into a surprisingly fine 100 steps. Looking back, I kind of blame that kind of rule for why fighters 'always' had an 18 strength (so they'd get the percentile boost).

I think we ignored the weird discriminatory part, but then again it was rare to play female characters because we were 10 and girls were icky. Also, we were geeks.

I disagree with this line of thought. Just because one can be offended by a certain aesthetic principle doesn't make it old or even old-fashioned.

Well, as a point of comparison, it's why the old WB cartoons now have 'family friendly' and 'complete' releases: These have older, outdated thoughts on race and other issues that may not be appropriate for all viewers.

I'd argue (in the example of cartoons, and games at well) that the old versions should be available as they have a cultural and historical relevance... But they are aged and need to be understood (viewed/played) with the disclaimer that they reflect a different era and sensibilities.

My point is, newer rules are not more playable because the underlying fantasy tropes respond to the political concerns of contemporary real life. There's a difference between whether a mechanic "works" and whether the players are comfortable with what the mechanic represents.

To continue with your analogy, you shouldn't discount the quality of the animation just because the subject matter is (currently considered) problematic.

 Manchu wrote:
My point is, newer rules are not more playable because the underlying fantasy tropes respond to the political concerns of contemporary real life. There's a difference between whether a mechanic "works" and whether the players are comfortable with what the mechanic represents.

To continue with your analogy, you shouldn't discount the quality of the animation just because the subject matter is (currently considered) problematic.

Fair enough, but as to rules: Yeah, I think older rule sets may reflect trends that just aren't as common today. Not as politically hot, but the ideal of a 'good game' drifts over time. Just keeping to D&D, AD&D -> AD&D2nd was a massive change... The designers felt that the fan base wanted a more 'realistic' game (I believe there's a side-bar in the PHB discussing how the equipment list was priced with realism as a goal, so armor was hideously expensive, etc.) and they tried to clean up a lot of mechanics (losing percentile strength, I believe. Adding Non-Weapon proficiencies. Unfiied-ish spell lists). Then years later 3.0 revised all this again, with unified mechanics (no thief skills with percentages) and major other changes. And 4.0 rewrote this...

Each edition is rooted in the designer's idea of what a 'good game' was for the time. This has definitely led to editions that have not aged well. For example, I'd consider running a gem in 2nd if people wanted to sue the old settings and such I've got boxed up in my spare room... But as a group, I don't know if we'd want to deal with the weird skill rules (that were fine in the day), lack of feats to help differentiate characters, and other advancements. We've moved on, the game hasn't.

For another point of view, in the late 90s it was no big deal for an RPG company to do a new splatbook every month or two. Game lines were huge, and metaplots spread over books gave gamers an incentive to collect the entire game line. Look at White Wolf's games, or the Deadlands game line, or a lot of others. (including Heavy Gear, made by guys I do work for, so bias bias bias.) There's been a backlash to this, and a lot of smaller games seem to be trending towards a limited set of release, with little or no metaplot. Eclipse Phase is from 2010 and has received maybe 2 books/year. FFG has done something interesting with their 40k games (and now their Star Wars games) by breaking a setting into multiple small game lines instead of the older 'core book + setting book' philosophy. It seems to work for them. Players can 'jump on' wherever it makes sense, and there's rules for interactions between games (i've heard various comments about the quality of these rules, but that's another topic!). They're keeping the game line manageable by doing multiple small game lines instead of a monolithic game.

This is somewhat cyclical, of course. Maybe in 10 years there'll be enough nostalgia for the massive metaplots and some developers will go back to those... White Wolf's successor is doing reprints, aren't they?

And while I'd call them 'aged' that just means they may have different, often rougher, experiences than newer games. They're certainly playable if a group wants that experience... They're jsut no longer the center of the gaming world, and have drifted to the fringes.

 Manchu wrote:
I disagree with this line of thought. Just because one can be offended by a certain aesthetic principle doesn't make it old or even old-fashioned.

"Women are weak" is an old fashioned value that is definitely showing its age, just like its application in games. I find games with this kind of misogynistic nonsense to be unplayable.

I think you're right about things being cyclical -- except as to splat. Small time press can't afford splat but all the big boys keep doing it from era to era. Right now the big boys are Paizo and FFG -- and yes there is splat galore. WW (a.k.a., Onyx Path) is a small shop these days, everything is KS, metaplot items are not being reprinted.

Balance, I'd recommend that you check some of the OSR games if you want to see a contemporary take on 80s RPGs.


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 Melissia wrote:
I find games with this kind of misogynistic nonsense to be unplayable.

And I find games about furries unplayable. Nothing to do with age.

Then that makes your dislike of furries a bad comparison.

 Melissia wrote:
Then that makes your dislike of furries a bad comparison.

Not really. As you can see above, the key distinction is between the mechanic itself and what the mechanic emulates.

Plus, you have a weak argument: this one bizarre detail of gender bias is your evidence that games age generally? How about other older games, like Classic Traveller or Basic D&D or Call of Cthulhu. Those games, all from the same time period, don't have gender-biased rules. Have they not aged?