Falling out of love with gaming

i honestly think the biggest problem with games today is that they're too fucking easy and too fucking short. seriously, i look back at playing games in the 80's and 90's like the original legend of zelda, metroid, and phantasy star, and they took a long time to beat and were a shit load of fun. there weren't any hints, there were no glowing paths showing you where to go next or unlimited continues. games today are too god damn easy and way too fucking short. bioshock infinite was awesome, but i beat it in a day and a half. that's horse shit. i miss games taking me weeks or even months to figure out. i miss games where you only had 3 continues and no save points. there's no reason with how powerful computers and consoles are today that they make these games that seriously have less than 10 hours of actual game play. just recently, my twin brother came home from the marines and me and my brother and my 3 nephews hooked up my old sega genesis and played ghouls and ghosts and golden axe for an entire weekend and i had more fun playing those old ass games than i've had playing video games in the past 5 or more years. what does that say about the industry? how can games like baldur's gate and castelvania: symphony of the night that came out over 10 years ago be so much harder, longer and better than anything that's being released now? i don't think it's us getting older, i think it's the industry getting shittier.

etchazz_sl said:

i honestly think the biggest problem with games today is that they're too fucking easy and too fucking short. seriously, i look back at playing games in the 80's and 90's like the original legend of zelda, metroid, and phantasy star, and they took a long time to beat and were a shit load of fun. there weren't any hints, there were no glowing paths showing you where to go next or unlimited continues. games today are too god damn easy and way too fucking short. bioshock infinite was awesome, but i beat it in a day and a half. that's horse shit. i miss games taking me weeks or even months to figure out. i miss games where you only had 3 continues and no save points. there's no reason with how powerful computers and consoles are today that they make these games that seriously have less than 10 hours of actual game play. just recently, my twin brother came home from the marines and me and my brother and my 3 nephews hooked up my old sega genesis and played ghouls and ghosts and golden axe for an entire weekend and i had more fun playing those old ass games than i've had playing video games in the past 5 or more years. what does that say about the industry? how can games like baldur's gate and castelvania: symphony of the night that came out over 10 years ago be so much harder, longer and better than anything that's being released now? i don't think it's us getting older, i think it's the industry getting shittier.

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This is a dumb argument... those old games took you so long to beat/figure out because you were younger and the genres didn't have established conventions and rules. You can find difficult games today if you bothered to look at indie stuff.

I've recently found myself unable to play consoles anymore. Every time I sit down to play I'm bored within 30 minutes. Even when I try really good games they just don't seem to be able to hook me on consoles anymore. No problems on the PC however.

I'm 43. This happened to me a long time ago, so I picked up a hobby that's a lot more fun than gaming: scripting for games. Try it, it's pretty darn fun.

All you wipper snappers today with your new fangled twitters and facebooks. Back in my day we had to print out maps from eqatlas, and then use the maps to cover our feet as we walked to the store in 2 feet of snow.

And when we got there they were out of smokes and miller, so we had to go home empty handed and take whatever beating dad was in the mood to give us.

It's the same reason every year of your life seems shorter than the last. Because the amount of genuinely new experiences you have shrinks. When you were 5 years old, another year would be as big as 20% of your experiences thus far. However, at 29, that same year would only be as big as 5%. If we are exposed to new things at the same rate as before (We aren't, as explained later, gaming has slowed down), the overall differences are going to much, much smaller because you have a far larger set of experiences to draw on. So what might have seemed fresh and exciting to you as a kid, now seems boring a derivative as an adult.

It's not all just our age though. The industry went from change incredibly quick with the dual growth of the internet and computers, to only refining itself. I mean, as kids, we saw gaming go from 8 bit Super Mario, to games like Quake (10 Years) in the same amount of time that EQ went to current MMO's (If you regard "WOTLK" as "Modern" WOW--about 8ish years?). Does anyone here believe the EQ to current MMO jump was as revolutionary and different as going from fucking Mario to blowing people's heads off on a lan in Quake? I mean, the Mario to FPS jump introduced radical new elements in both play, graphics and systems--the EQ to modern MMO jump, or the Quake to BF3 jump just had further refinements to those elements (With a few notable exceptions, like environmental damage ect).

The changes just haven't been as big--The industry was reinventing itself every ten seconds back then. And your brain loves new patterns, it revels in them. The gaming industry gave you shovel fulls of them, because technology was shifting so quickly. The last ten years or so though, technology has refined itself, and those systems/patterns have become better--but they've also stabilized. Us being part of that first generation saw these rules and patterns for making games being laid down, all these experiences were tested on us--so every new game that uses them feels a little worn out the moment it gets booted up.

That's my feelings, anyway. MMO's and online games kind of stand against this--because other people create randomness in content, which can't really be accounted for. But it feels like, especially since the last few generations, the number 1 things designers have done is reduce the randomness another person can have on your play--which for new people, is great, because the game itself is providing that stimulation. For us older gamers? Not so much. But we're not the market. There is a huge, huge group of people that just started gaming over the last decade. And unfortunately for us, it's easier to refine the old stuff down, make it more accessible and sell it to those people, than it is to build new stuff.

I don't think we're doomed forever though, just for a long while. The next great leap forward for us will come with very advanced AI (For everything from mobs, to dynamic building), or new network/MMO tools (To allow for smaller publishers to build), or with revolutionary interfacing technologies (Kinect ect is the first stab at this).....If any of those three things really blows up, gaming will get it's magic back for us.

I know, personally, as cool as a VR tool would be, or niche MMO's, I really want a break through in AI. I can only imagine how much better games like Skyrim, or even Civ 5, would be if the computer was as complex as a player. Like imagine an open world RPG where each of the NPC's behaved like humans--it's a near impossibility to have this in an MMO because real humans need to log out, and have lives...But imagine if we could have it in a game, where NPC genuinely thought like humans (Like say, could understand language, so we could type and ask them open ended questions). It's insane to think about because AI has really lagged behind almost every other facet of gaming (For good reason, it must be extremely difficult to make.)

Sorry, rambling.

TL R Obviously there is a lot of room for growth in the industry. I've kind of fallen out of love for games though because I see companies are specifically not growing, they are refining their product. But I've already grown bored with their product--no matter how slick and refined it is, I've already played it. Someday, when the overall market is as saturated as us, we'll get the next big thing.

That's pretty much spot on. Lately the only games I've really been enjoying are throwback sorts of games. Games that were fun 15 years ago but you left them thinking "man, that was pretty cool. Wouldn't it have been even cooler done TO THE MAX EXTREME?"

And you can find them these days done to the max extreme with various levels of polish. We're not talking about AAA titles here. The 3A's... what lithose said.

Edit: I mean games like Mount & Blade, which reminds me of Daggerfall + Pirates but scaled up to pure goofyness. And Crusader Kings, which reminds me so much of the byzantine doors games you used to jack off to as a kid while waiting for a grainy set of tits to download -- except this one is even MORE byzantine and graphicmical.

It happens to have a dry spell. Great games dont come out everyday.

I know even though I'm 30 I still love gaming because, my real problem isn't that I don't love games anymore. Its that when I get hooked on a title, I play it so damn much I burn through the content too fast and then I'm sad it's over.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of games, though.

yeah, I think Lithose hit some good points.

The industry is huge now. it was much smaller back when. New genres constantly being invented. And while I would never say, no new genres can be created in the future, it will certainly get harder and harder to make new ones. that constant innovation was something. Much of todays games really are just taking different parts of older ones and mashing together. "lets add rpg elements to all games!" has been one big thing obviously.
The other aspect of the bigger industry is, its harder to keep track of what to play. while I give people some shit for not checking out the myriad of indie games, or AA mmos, etc. it isn't entirely their fault. unless you really pay attention, tons of game could easily pass under your radar. Look at path of exile. if not for a number of us, talking about it, or kripp getting into it, how many people would have heard of it? mainstream probably still doesn't know.

I personally don't understand why people put blinders on for indie stuff. this goes for comics too. I can sit there in the comic thread, and recommend 30 indie books which are lightyears better then anything DC/marvel. yet again and again. "which batman should I read?" or" I checked out Batman, which other nu52 should I read?" same occurs in gaming.



As for mmos.
I want several mmos archetypes. I have at least 3 radically different design concepts I want to see, when I think "mmo." 1.UO 2013 ffa economy, crafting, building, mining etc 2. diablo/mad king/lol blend. 3. standard wow/eq/gw2

one thing I want to see, is a shift from character to account.
I think LoL and a lesser degree PoE, etc have some of this. I think "hey jump on your mage, or jump on your cleric" should absolutely be a thing. one char, and only one char is a mistake. largely brought on by "soulbound". A huge design misstep for mmos.
You should want to party with a player, not their character.
in lol your account has levels, your character has levels in the context of each individual game. realm of the mad god works along this concept.
I think it might be interesting to have an mmo, where you character is level 1 at the start of every dungeon crawl, and levels up to 10ish during it. starting a dungeon is akin to LoL and picking characters with your team.
how open world works would remain to be seen. "you" are a summoner, or merc guild leader maybe. world you play as you, dungeons you play as the summons/mercs?
even in context of other mmos, as they are formed, perma death, etc. loss of character, loss of items, skill ups, no respecs, fast leveling. akin to diablo2/path of exile. these games were build and designed on the assumption you will have like 7+ alts. Mmo's pushing for 1 character and only 1 char is a mistake. dungeon teiring, and the loot cycle enforce this.

Was thinking about this last night. The biggest reason MMOs are fail for me these days is if you recall the eq/eq2 era, group mechanics were somewhat complex. Pulls had to be strategic, CC was important and overall group cooperation was important. It seemed that for an MMO anyway this was the benefit of having people to play with and an MMO supplied people to play with. Honestly, i wouldn't mind a forced grouping game these days. Newer games and even WoW made it so you don't really have to group which is nice of course, but the industry for the mostpart post-WoW took this and ran with it. I mean, which games now have group content be the "premier" content with mechanics that take real cooperation and thought between folks ? Hell I don't know of any past Vanguard.. which is why MMOs and I are not friends anymore.

If I want to play solo, i will play Single Player RPGs which are better than the watered down single player experience in MMOs.

Play pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons. You can get groups online, play with Skype and there are even map programs so you can share a map.

Dungeons and Dragons is why a lot of got into RPGs to begin with.

Disagree that it's just our perception based on experience.

Diablo III and Sim City weren't poor because we've played too many other games. They were just poor on their own merits. Having waited so long for them and looking forward to such projects for so long of course that is going to be a massive kick in the nuts.


A major problem is the money men are grabbing up more and more dev houses and changing them from turning out fun to turning out cash grabs.

What we need is some one or some group with gravitas to put together a boycott of the big studios. It might be difficult at the moment to set mass support for that, but I can't see anything changing in the way the big players operate. More and more people are going to have had enough of their methods.

I work offshore for deep sea drilling type stuff and I often have 16 + hour days to play games. Our internet connection is suspect at best, but I still have a decent laptop + x box, but despite 2 weeks of free time with 16 hours a day available or so, I have lots of trouble getting into any games.

Last games I was able to finish were all emulator SNES games like rock n roll racing, Zelda, FF3, Civ3, and Super Metroid.

I've failed at going anywhere in about 10 x's the amount of those games and started trying to read WoT series and watching series. If my connection were better, I think I'd be able to sink some time into EQ emulators, but that's about the only thing I can see having the replay value for the amount of time I have out there.

DMK_sl said:

You just said Diablo was an MMO... /facepalm

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hes 18 man give him a break, thats like being 2 on this board.

Big gaming slump here for me as well. I've been having a blast on the latest Minecraft server for Rerolled. Single player games though are just boring me, which sucks. I keep trying to get back into Eed Dead Redemption, and I want to love the game, I want to immerse myself in it, but I just can't play it for more than 20 minutes before thinking I'd have more fun in WoW, and that game has completely lost its magic for me. There IS one thing I'm enjoying more than anything I have n a while though, and it's VS matches on NHL 13. I pretty much actively avoided it for years just because I always thought I would get smashed all the time, but it turns out with the ranking system, you eventually hit a point where you usuall face equal opponents. So I've been doing big 2-3 stretches of VS games when I can and I'm loving it. I'm sure we're in for more great games...eventually. But for now it's certainly been bland to me as well.

The people on page 2-3 talking about it being because we're older now could not be more full of shit. I'm still finding amazing games to play that try fresh and innovative, genuinely interesting ways to hold my attention. Stuff like minecraft, killing floor, dark souls, DayZ and plenty of other recent games have all been fantastic to me. The problem is that MMOs have been UTTERLY stagnant in every way I can thing of since about wow. I liked UO, but thought EQ was an amazing improvement. I loved EQ, but thought WoW added a ton of good things that the genre needed. Since wow though? Stagnant. Every game tries to rip off wow, or is just basically awful. I can't even BELIEVE someone used rift as a counterpoint. I felt like every single aspect of that game was wow, right down to graphics and gameplay style. All I can remember it having as different are the dynamic events and a more interesting class system.

GW2 might be the exception since I feel like it's finally made F2p done in a less terrible way, and hopefully future MMOs follow suit.