Am I losing interest in video games?

[videogames101]

Originally posted by: marmasatt

Some very good points in this thread. Some of us are getting older. Some of us are just bored with the same ol' stuff and our same ol' genre. I play exclusively FPS, so think of how bad it is for me, lol. I too find that I am bored - while I loved Stalker - and Bioshock is simplly awesome with the lights off and surround sound on. These types of games are the only thing that holds my interest. There's just not enough of them around. I almost can feel it coming on, like I'm going to let gaming go completely for awhile. Will probably wait for the big titles coming out until the end of the year (especially Crysis) and see how it goes. Although I don't know how it could possibly live up to the hype. Bioshock is barely able to do so. Not because it's a bad game, but because it's been hyped up and shoved down our throats beyond belief.

Crysis only needs to have the BEST graphics EVER in ANY video games, and it lives up to the hype. although gameplay would be a plus, it doesn't matter all the much to me. As long Crysis shoots the graphics of so called "Next-Generation" Consoles dead, i'll be happy.

A nice boost of confidence for us enthusiasts! *cheers* :beer:

 

[Goosemaster]

I too hope crysis is good....biohock bored me in like 5min

 

[CrystalBay]

Crysis will have good graphics !!! But I am really worried about the storyline ...

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: CrystalBay
Crysis will have good graphics !!! But I am really worried about the storyline ...

and the voice acting.....

 

[Adn4n]

Fear not, Mass Effect shows promise.

 

[QuantumPion]

Since playing WoW, single player games like NWN and Oblivion just seem so boring and lonely.

For those of you saying that games are buggier now then they used to be, you have no idea what you are talking about. PC games have always been released with game-breaking bugs. Even before the internet, when there was no practical way to patch them.

I'm like a lot of you though, I bought several games lately that I played for 10 minutes but got bored and haven't finished yet. If you are looking for a great game to catch your interest, try digging up some old classics. I recently started playing Master of Magic (which works 100% in dosbox) and Dungeon Keeper 2 lately. I forgot how awesome those classic games were!

 

[Swiller of Beer]

I think it is a combination of not enough time/nothing catching my interest enough to make the time for games. But then again I'm still playing games like MechWarrior IV:Mercs, Freespace 2, UT2k4, etc. so I could just be living in a cave or something.

 

[gchanjam]

I do believe it is the games themselves and not the gamers that is causing the boredom. Iifeel the exact same way with tons of games that I bought but couldn't bring myself to finish. However, every so often, a real gem comes down the pipe and I find myself playing them with as much excitement as I did playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my brand new Genesis all those years ago. A few recent examples include Bioshock, Shadow of the Colossus, and Okami. It is unfortunate though that these experiences are so rare but they do happen.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Originally posted by: Adn4n
Fear not, Mass Effect shows promise.

It's just annoying having to wait these days...

Years ago it seemed like when I was done with one game, there was so many other 'promising' titles that I wanted to play.

Now it's just like... 'well we've got this to look forward to in a few months, hopefully'

However, every so often, a real gem comes down the pipe and I find myself playing them with as much excitement as I did playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my brand new Genesis all those years ago.

I couldn't get enough of that game. Beating Sonic 2 was such an accomplishment to me. Definitely among the top all-time for me. Huge amounts of nostalgic value in that as well for me.

 

[yuchai]

I feel the same way. With most new games I just can't gather enough interest to complete them, especially any games that requires learning a whole set of rules.
I still have a weakness for pretty graphics though, and there's a good chance I will pick up Crysis when it's out. But then there's also a good chance I will not complete it.

Recently started replaying X-Com: UFO Defence and Master of Orion, and they are just so much immersive than any recent games I've played. I rarely play for long sittings anymore, but these two games just suck you right in.

 

[RandomFool]

That happened to me. Right up until about 2003, I was playing pretty much everything that came out. After awhile I played counter-strike almost exclusively. When CS:S came out I switched to that but eventually just sort of stopped playing anything regularly.

The thing that brought me back to gaming was the Wii. Then TF2 & Portal got me back in PC games again. TFC was my love affair with online gaming and I couldn't resist.

 

[bullbert]

Originally posted by: Aikouka

Originally posted by: whateverdude
I don't buy that. I still love playing games. I'm just sick of the lack of originality in alot of the games coming out lately and the bugginess of alot of them. It seems that the quest for the almighty dollar has tainted quality control in the industry. Company's rush to get games out the door and release them 75% finished and hope they can make enough sales before anyone notices seems to be the norm nowadays. The problem is that gamers in their late 20's and above remember the days when games were better and more polished when they came out. Sure they had bugs but nothing like what we are seeing these days. So we stop buying them but the younger players don't and hence the cycle continues.

Until gamers stop buying buggy ass games, the game companies will keep pushing inferior products on us. It's as simple as that.

Games are also a lot more complex when it comes to their implementation these days. This complexity is what introduces bugs into a program. I mean, this is a highly simplified example, but imagine going from a Hello World program to a custom language interpreter.

Also, with a lot of the changes that large 3d worlds provide to games, you're also going to suffer a large problem with testing... you simply cannot test every single input.

Not entirely true. Compare the olden days to the current days. The actual number of new lines of code has not really changed. The coding lanuage, style, and reuse base obviously has, but not the new line counts. It was ALL hand coded assembly back in the day. Compilers were few and far between, too expensive, and too inefficient. Remember that there was no harddrive swap space, and a hardcoded limit of 48Kb dram (or 64kb depending on you point of view), so inefficient compilers were basically worthless. Now it is all coded in some high order or object oriented language, compiled down into a buggy mush and never hand optimized, layered on top of a pre-existing game engine. Of course I am comparing the 2000s to the late 1970s and early 1980s during the olden days when Bill Gates was still getting arrested on reckless driving charges in a Porsche bought with his daddy's money, LONG before M$ made him a billionaire. M$ was still in its early days, long before Bill stole Windows from Apple, but well after Bill had stolen CPM from what could have been labeled as the open-source community of the 1970s and eventually turned it into DOS 3.1. M$ was even bad at trial and error back then. I even still have one of the original Microsoft produced CPM (pre-DOS 1.0) products.

The graphics art is way more complex now, but to me, a good AI opponent is way more important than how pretty the blood spurs out of a decapitated body.

I saw one article (on a console game, not a PC game) where the budget spent was roughly 25% for code development, 25% for graphics art, AND 25% FOR CONSOLE LICENSING. Ouch! The final 25% was spent on everything else including distribution, advertising, manufacturing and packaging, etc. Too much budget wasted on pretty corpses and on lawyers, and not enough invested in developement and debug. It is no wonder that no game ever works straight-out-of-the-box, anymore. PC games have required patches from day 1, for years. But now, even console game are requiring a Live connection to download patches before booting. Look at what we have become.

 

[irishScott]

The only games that peak my interest are the insanely complex/strategic ones. I was into Rome: Total War for awhile, but after I beat the Gauls the Spaniards became a pain in the arse and it reached a stalemate that made me loose interest after a few hours.

Now I find I'm more into Flight Sims due to their complexity and realism. The only current "games" that I've bought are the Splinter Cell series, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and C&C3 (one of the exceptions to the above that I thoroughly enjoyed). I'd get Supreme Commander, but my GPU is weak as hell.

Hell, I've even gone back into the old "Time Warp of Dr. Brain" game I played as a kid. It's one of the few educational puzzle games that was actually made with both kids and adults in mind, and on the highest difficulty level (genius level) it sometimes takes me a couple of hours to go through a single puzzle. Still, I suppose it's more like the ultimate puzzle book then a PC "game" per-se (there's very little plot to it. Just really nice puzzles)

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

MMORPGs ruined gaming for me. Specifically Ultima Online. I can't play single player games any more because it feels as interactive as reading a book.

So, honestly, the memory of my time playing UO may prevent me from ever enjoying a game again. ALL I play now is CS:S, but CS:S is more of a sport.....not really emotionally engaging or imagination stimulative at all.

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Older games that I've (re)played in the past 3 months:

Deus Ex
Anachronox
Fallout Tactics
Jagged Alliance 2

All great games and more fun/interesting than any new games I've played recently. Portal was cool though.

 

[nova2]

personally,
in regards to FPS games, like FEAR Combat (free multiplayer only) and Call of Duty and so on, if you keep getting/playing new maps every once in awhile, talk about much life expansion for the game, at least for me.
Too bad I don't get good newly released maps every month or two - that would be great

but as technology advances, and map creation eventually becomes easier and so on, who wouldn't take pleasure in creating their own tactical scenario maps? Probably some amount of people, but not the ones with the concepts and passion.

 

[IEC]

Last recent game I played was World in Conflict. Engaged my interest for the 12 or so hours it took me to beat the campaign. Currently playing Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004) and "living the life". Although I've just about beat everything there too

I've resigned myself to playing Starcraft on weekends with dormmates and the occasional pubbing in CS Source.

Innovation just isn't there in most games. I'm tired of playing the same crap over and over.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: irishScott
The only games that peak my interest are the insanely complex/strategic ones. I was into Rome: Total War for awhile, but after I beat the Gauls the Spaniards became a pain in the arse and it reached a stalemate that made me loose interest after a few hours.

Now I find I'm more into Flight Sims due to their complexity and realism. The only current "games" that I've bought are the Splinter Cell series, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, and C&C3 (one of the exceptions to the above that I thoroughly enjoyed). I'd get Supreme Commander, but my GPU is weak as hell.

Hell, I've even gone back into the old "Time Warp of Dr. Brain" game I played as a kid. It's one of the few educational puzzle games that was actually made with both kids and adults in mind, and on the highest difficulty level (genius level) it sometimes takes me a couple of hours to go through a single puzzle. Still, I suppose it's more like the ultimate puzzle book then a PC "game" per-se (there's very little plot to it. Just really nice puzzles)

One other game from that era of gaming that is "educational/puzzle" is Marble Drop. That game was great - still play it when I'm bored and want to think.

 

[IEC]

Originally posted by: pontifex
I remember a time when I had a hard time making a decision on what game I wanted to buy.

Now I have a hard time just trying to find a game I want to buy.

:laugh:

 

[Capitalizt]

Portal is owning my ass! I really really really hope the developers make the code public so we can see tons of user maps and modifications. That alone would keep me gaming for years.

 

[AzN]

There are many games that are slow and you lose interest. I was like this too but not lately. I lost interest to games like Oblivion and stopped playing it completely and never finished it. Some awesome games started to appear although recycled to an extent. It's usually gameplay or story that gets me going. Take a break from gaming. There was a time when I was in High school I completely stopped playing video games for 5 years or so and than came back to it and it was a different breed of gaming by then.

Lately though we are getting near photo realistic graphics that appeal more to the gamer. I don't play every title but I like trying it out. Gaming is a experience. If you do it all the time you get bored much like anything else.

 

[Superrock]

I buy a lot of games I don't play nowadays. Hopefully that will change soon with Bioshock and the Orange Box.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: bullbert
Not entirely true. Compare the olden days to the current days. The actual number of new lines of code has not really changed. The coding lanuage, style, and reuse base obviously has, but not the new line counts. It was ALL hand coded assembly back in the day. Compilers were few and far between, too expensive, and too inefficient. Remember that there was no harddrive swap space, and a hardcoded limit of 48Kb dram (or 64kb depending on you point of view), so inefficient compilers were basically worthless. Now it is all coded in some high order or object oriented language, compiled down into a buggy mush and never hand optimized, layered on top of a pre-existing game engine. Of course I am comparing the 2000s to the late 1970s and early 1980s during the olden days when Bill Gates was still getting arrested on reckless driving charges in a Porsche bought with his daddy's money, LONG before M$ made him a billionaire. M$ was still in its early days, long before Bill stole Windows from Apple, but well after Bill had stolen CPM from what could have been labeled as the open-source community of the 1970s and eventually turned it into DOS 3.1. M$ was even bad at trial and error back then. I even still have one of the original Microsoft produced CPM (pre-DOS 1.0) products.

The graphics art is way more complex now, but to me, a good AI opponent is way more important than how pretty the blood spurs out of a decapitated body.

I saw one article (on a console game, not a PC game) where the budget spent was roughly 25% for code development, 25% for graphics art, AND 25% FOR CONSOLE LICENSING. Ouch! The final 25% was spent on everything else including distribution, advertising, manufacturing and packaging, etc. Too much budget wasted on pretty corpses and on lawyers, and not enough invested in developement and debug. It is no wonder that no game ever works straight-out-of-the-box, anymore. PC games have required patches from day 1, for years. But now, even console game are requiring a Live connection to download patches before booting. Look at what we have become.

I think we're kind of talking about two different things. You're going back a bit further than I intended to talk about. The general idea that I was trying to get at is that game engines are more complex, especially with the jump to 3d that we have. I mean, I could write a 2d engine collision detection mechanism fairly easily (it's not some menial task mind you, but it's certainly not that difficult). A 3d collision detection mechanism would definitely be a tougher task. That's kind of what I was trying to aim at... the way that games are becoming these days is naturally making them more complex, and the complexity increases chance for errors.

AI has always been a difficult aspect of a game. I remember reading an article and the way the developer described it was kind of amusing (and also true), "it's hard to make the enemies shoot and miss." Which is understandable, I mean... how do I best simulate how people can and should react without making the game too difficult, etc. I actually seem to enjoy the topic of AI... I guess it comes from enjoying psychology as AI can be drawn out as a "map" of human thought (in case of humans), and that can be fairly interesting.

As for patching console games, I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, the ability to patch can bring the fear of laziness into programming.

 

[MrUniq]

I'm in the same boat...I start games and I lose interest. I tend to focus on modding instead of actually finishing the game. But when I so play...I get tired at the end and turn on god mode in order to finish quickly . It's just at the end..it's still the same thing..but it become rediculously harder after being very long. The last game I finished in earnest was HL2, Resident Evil 4, and Splinter Cell Double Agent. To be honest..all these FPS are tiresome. It seems like they could come up with something new. Oblivion was refreshing too..but even after awhile it seems canned(but I mod it..so I know how it works).

 

[slightlyhuman]

i was like that too. tf2 saved my life.