This forum is aging.. gaming getting old for you too?

[Trudyblammer]

I totally feel you man..I no longer feel for games the same way as I did 5 years back. I've tried a lot of the new games but just can't keep interest. I do like to play the old DOS games every now and then though haha

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Relevant.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...i-pick-up-a-controller-as-often-as-i-used-to/

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Relevant.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019...i-pick-up-a-controller-as-often-as-i-used-to/

This thread interests me and I’m glad it was bumped. My gaming time has gone way, way down over the past few years. It has almost gotten to the point where if I spend a couple of hours in an entire week on gaming, it is an outlier.

My reasons?

1. Lack of games that interest me. And even of the games that should interest me, I’ll buy them and they’ll collect dust. For example, I bought the most recent God of War for my PS4 probably over a year ago and it remains unopened. I have a Tomb Raider game for my Xbox One which I haven’t opened. My consoles are basically dust collectors at this point. And that doesn’t even count all the games in my Steam library which I haven’t touched.
2. Changing tastes and life - 15-20 years ago, I would immerse myself in genres like MMOs and devote almost my entire weekend to them and several hours through the week. Now, even if an MMO came along that seemed interesting to play, I doubt I’d play it - sometimes those games feel like a second job, except I’m not getting paid.
3. I’m 48, so while my reaction times and reflexes have slipped (along with my vision), I can still hold my own in many FPS games. I still tend to favor those kinds of games because I can pick them up, play them a little bit, and put them down. MMOs and persistent-world survival games, two genres I enjoyed, just require too much time commitment.
4. I can’t really sit at a desk for hours and hours playing games any longer. It’s just not comfortable, especially after sitting at my desk 8+ hours a day staring at multiple screens for work. Even if I picked console gaming back up, none of my friends and brothers really play console games. I did buy a Steam Link months ago on sale so I could play from my recliner on my TV, but - you guessed it - it is still unopened.
5. Other stress and responsibilities take priority. Sometimes after a rough day of work, I just want to sit down and watch TV or read.

 

[Homerboy]

I basically play 2 games nowadays:

MLB The Show on PS4 (I'm a baseball nerd and this is casual enough and slow enough for my aging reflexes) and Path of Exile on the PC. I put a good number of hours in on each, but it's not "prime hours" per se. It's early mornings when my old ass can't sleep and I'm awake at 4am, or weekend mornings before any one else is awake. There's just much real-world stuff to take care of and as @IndyColtsFan pointed out, I sit in front of a PC at work 8+ hours a day staring at multiple screens and in some crappy chair. I don't want to do that when I get home.

Very few games draw my sincere interest as well - at least not enough to "waste" my time on them.

 

[bigi]

Same boat. After Doom 2016, I have found nothing worthy of playing.

I tend to replay old games, very old sometimes. I play games from the 80s - Green Beret, Frogger, PacMan, Tempest, Astro Blaster, Galaga, etc.

Just playing Quake 2 XP. I guess, the best is what one had grew up on.

Attempted to re-play Crysis 2/3 and uninstalled both after a day.

 

[DigDog]

A necro worth bumping?? Thats new.

Imho it's just that the quality of games has constsntly been going down since Halo. Your typical AAA title - both the meathead stuff like COD, and the smarter games too - is not even in the same category as Monkey Island. Never mind that diminishing returns in technology development have lessened the wow factor, it's just that the individual care that was put in early games has suffered tremendously of the expansion of team sizes required to create a game today. Most stuff that is GOOD is indie anyway (because of this), AAA stuff tends to be passable at best, and always shooting for the common denominator.

Im 46 and my fps reflexes have never been better. It's not me - it's the games.

 

[ericlp]

LOL, I blame crappy consoles. Oh and greed. All the new game makers just wanna port the console to PC (cross platforms) and only seem to make the game as good as the console...yeah, maybe you'll get higher resolution if your lucky. But anything cool that pushes the PC 1080ti is left out since, PC titles have been pretty much left on the back burner.

Sadly, the majority of money is still being made on consoles ...but... with AMD 2200G at 80 bucks. Maybe the tide may shift back? Who knows. I sometimes wonder what it will take to get game writers to put some quality writing and programing back into the PC market. Maybe a fundamental shift of killing microsoft and going with linux. Steam may save us all, bring back real gaming to the party. Bringing back ultra budget 300 dollar gaming PC's without having to drop another 100 bucks on the OS may do it.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

It seems like there isn't enough thought and care put into the game systems themselves (balance, mechanics, etc.). This makes no sense to me as that should be a relatively inexpensive area to give some attention.

 

[bbhaag]

This thread interests me and I’m glad it was bumped. My gaming time has gone way, way down over the past few years. It has almost gotten to the point where if I spend a couple of hours in an entire week on gaming, it is an outlier.

My reasons?

1. Lack of games that interest me. And even of the games that should interest me, I’ll buy them and they’ll collect dust. For example, I bought the most recent God of War for my PS4 probably over a year ago and it remains unopened. I have a Tomb Raider game for my Xbox One which I haven’t opened. My consoles are basically dust collectors at this point. And that doesn’t even count all the games in my Steam library which I haven’t touched.
2. Changing tastes and life - 15-20 years ago, I would immerse myself in genres like MMOs and devote almost my entire weekend to them and several hours through the week. Now, even if an MMO came along that seemed interesting to play, I doubt I’d play it - sometimes those games feel like a second job, except I’m not getting paid.
3. I’m 48, so while my reaction times and reflexes have slipped (along with my vision), I can still hold my own in many FPS games. I still tend to favor those kinds of games because I can pick them up, play them a little bit, and put them down. MMOs and persistent-world survival games, two genres I enjoyed, just require too much time commitment.
4. I can’t really sit at a desk for hours and hours playing games any longer. It’s just not comfortable, especially after sitting at my desk 8+ hours a day staring at multiple screens for work. Even if I picked console gaming back up, none of my friends and brothers really play console games. I did buy a Steam Link months ago on sale so I could play from my recliner on my TV, but - you guessed it - it is still unopened.
5. Other stress and responsibilities take priority. Sometimes after a rough day of work, I just want to sit down and watch TV or read.

Yep I'm in a very similar situation as you although there is 10 years of difference in our age(I'm 38)but I feel the same way. I was into gaming all through adolescence and into my early 20's then my son was born and something in me changed. I can't sit down at the PC for hours on end and play games for hours anymore. IDK why but it's just boring to me.

You want to know what I did this morning from 8:30am to around 1pm? House work like laundry and stuff but the big thing was I hung 3 bi-fold doors that my wife had sanded and stained to match the wood work. For some reason I get so much more satisfaction out of doing something like that then sitting in front of the PC for hours gaming. Maybe it's the sense of accomplishment when the job is done. You can step back and look at it and feel like you did something.

Anyway, IDK if that makes any sense. It's hard for me to put into words what I'm trying to express.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Same boat. After Doom 2016, I have found nothing worthy of playing.

I tend to replay old games, very old sometimes. I play games from the 80s - Green Beret, Frogger, PacMan, Tempest, Astro Blaster, Galaga, etc.

Just playing Quake 2 XP. I guess, the best is what one had grew up on.

Attempted to re-play Crysis 2/3 and uninstalled both after a day.

You bring up something I’ve been thinking about lately - retro gaming. I have a huge, working, and largely intact collection of Commodore systems from the 80s. They’re boxed up currently but I’ve been thinking about pulling a couple out and doing some retro gaming. Or, with space at a premium in my office, maybe I’ll just run emulators for now. I love old arcade, Atari, and Commodore games.

Speaking of Quake, I can still remember when it came out and still remember when I got my first Voodoo card from Incredible Universe (who remembers them?) and loaded up GLQuake. It blew me away.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Yep I'm in a very similar situation as you although there is 10 years of difference in our age(I'm 38)but I feel the same way. I was into gaming all through adolescence and into my early 20's then my son was born and something in me changed. I can't sit down at the PC for hours on end and play games for hours anymore. IDK why but it's just boring to me.

You want to know what I did this morning from 8:30am to around 1pm? House work like laundry and stuff but the big thing was I hung 3 bi-fold doors that my wife had sanded and stained to match the wood work. For some reason I get so much more satisfaction out of doing something like that then sitting in front of the PC for hours gaming. Maybe it's the sense of accomplishment when the job is done. You can step back and look at it and feel like you did something.

Anyway, IDK if that makes any sense. It's hard for me to put into words what I'm trying to express.

I hear what you’re saying. A hobby that took a big hold of me in the last couple of years is smart home automation. I still have a ton of work to do but it is so cool implementing logic-based actions and scenes in my house.

 

[BSim500]

Imho it's just that the quality of games has constsntly been going down since Halo. Your typical AAA title - both the meathead stuff like COD, and the smarter games too - is not even in the same category as Monkey Island. Never mind that diminishing returns in technology development have lessened the wow factor, it's just that the individual care that was put in early games has suffered tremendously of the expansion of team sizes required to create a game today. Most stuff that is GOOD is indie anyway (because of this), AAA stuff tends to be passable at best, and always shooting for the common denominator. Im 46 and my fps reflexes have never been better. It's not me - it's the games.

Totally agree. For me it has less to do with being 10-20 years older and tastes subjectively changing, and more simply that the nature of games has objectively changed (and not always for the better). The "red flag" is to take a look at when 90's franchises started out (mostly the same decade) then compare that to when 'modern' franchises started out:-

- Anno (1998), Assassins Creed (2007), Battlefield (2002), Call of Duty (2003), Civilization (1991), Doom (1993), Dragon Quest (1986), Fallout (1997), FIFA (1993), Far Cry (2004), Final Fantasy (1987), Gears of War (2006), Grand Theft Auto (1997), Hitman (2000), Just Cause (2006), Madden (1988), NBA (1989), Need For Speed (1994), NHL (1991), Star Wars: Battlefront (2004), The Sims (2000), Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon (2001), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six (1998), Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002), Tomb Raider (1996), Tropico (2001), Wolfenstein (1981), WWE (2000), X-COM (1994), etc...

The past decade has been uniquely abysmal for AAA new IP creativity in the entire history of video gaming to the extent that if you sent modern AAA publishers back in time to the 90's and told them to make games then as they've been during the past decade, then Doom, Quake, Unreal, Baldur's Gate, Age of Empires, Deus Ex, System Shock, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, Thief, Tomb Radier, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Diablo, etc, would all have never have been created. They'd still be stuck rebooting Rise of the Pac-Man 87, Digger 49: Remastered VR Edition, Call of Zork 235, Paperboy 76, Boulder Dash: Creed Odyssey and Shadow of Tetris 41...

On top of chronic lack of creativity, we've also had the quadruple negative whammy of first consolization, then dumbing down "for the casual audience", then the "fake expansion" BS DLC, finally followed up by modern "alternative revenue stream" forcing the over-monetization of smartphones games mechanics into full priced AAA PC games, any of which can screw up even potentially good new creative games.

 

[BSim500]

It seems like there isn't enough thought and care put into the game systems themselves (balance, mechanics, etc.). This makes no sense to me as that should be a relatively inexpensive area to give some attention.

Some of it is laziness, but other times it's partly deliberate though. Eg, if a game has "time-saver" micro-transactions that allows you to skip grinding up levels by buying them, then the devs will disproportionately be much more likely to ensure the "base grind ratio" will be deliberately exaggerated to 'drive engagement' (force more people to buy "pay2degrind" MT's for annoyance removal purposes) vs if the same game had no post-purchase MT's or was designed as a single-player title. Pretty much any game where you "level up" via endless grind / repetitive unlocks is just born for pay2win / pay2cheat MT's (and artificial levels of over-grind as 'encouragement'), and devs have already wisened up to this. And not just how the game is at launch but the fact DRM + online functionality / controlled servers means it can even be changed post launch, ie, the game as launched "plays nice" but then after 35-40 days (enough time that pre-orderers / week one purchasers are no longer eligible for a 30-day refund), the devs release an update that changes the base grind-ratio mechanics from subtle to overly unpleasant to play if you don't buy pay2degrind DLC.

Likewise "broken" match-making is done deliberately to drive the weaker player into buying more upgrades to match the stronger one. Same goes for "dynamic difficulty adjustment" which may, eg, detect your favorite weapon class (eg, 'this player uses pistols +80% of the time'), then changes "random" drop ratio's so that free 'drops' exclude pistols, whilst 'coincidentally' offering you the chance to buy a Legendary Pistol MT and if you don't, then simultaneously gradually increases the enemy armor vs your pistols in a later area of the game where you'll struggle to pass without paying for extra help. ie, all the stuff you'd think is static for all players even in single player games (eg, enemy HP's, armor, your own accuracy, etc) may well differ according to how much you spend on MT's... If that sounds far-fetched, EA & Activision have already patented this stuff for future games:-
https://www.pcgamesn.com/activision-microtransaction-matchmaking-patent
https://www.pcgamesn.com/ea-matchmaking-microtransactions-eomm-engagement-patent

 

[zink77]

The reality is for those of us who've been gaming for a long time. If you were in your late teens or 20's during the 90's, you pretty much saw the rise of fraud with mmo's, steam drm and f2p games. So gaming started to suck when technologically illiterate masses internet. Which is why the 90's will be remembered as the golden age forever - the level editors, modding, and sheer creativity of that era will never be duplicated again because the average person now has internet, whereas before it was nerds targeting other nerds so we got all the cool shit like programming SDK's and level editing tools. That has been massively curtailed in the modern PC environment to sell mtx... and Microsoft, google, etc are pushing to lock down computing devices like android so they can use the mobile business model on all software.

The internet has been the greatest tool for fraud, mass privacy invasion, and corporate theft in all of human history. Because they now no longer need to send software on a disc to wal-marts of the world to get paid. They can just commit fraud by stealing half the software and keep it at their office and call it a service.

This saw RPG's on the PC disappear and be rebadged mmo's during the late 90's early 2000's when Everquest and wow went gangbusters, there was a massive goldrush, this normalised the non ownership of games for a generation of teens which lead to micro-transactions and downright abusive and fraudulent practices on mobile because of android.

The modern game industry is essentially a criminal organisation masquerading as a business. Valve with the theft of half-life/cs by inserting steam drm to take control of the software out of PC gamers hands was the big deathknell for gaming as a whole on the PC and we live in some kind of drm infested dystopia.

The fact we're now seeing Microsoft push Orwellian drm in windows 10 and make the "operating system" as a service, is just shit on a giant shitcake. Just because normal computer uninformed people got internet. We now objectively live in a PC software and gaming dystopia.

Like literally, when Team fortress 2 added micro-transactions and went f2p, it was a sign of the times. Companies no longer need to make games because the fibre optic and telecommunication infrastructure gives them access to people who are stupid and have impulse control problems 24/7. They are literally committing fraud, so back in the quake 3 days when we had qeradiant, sdk's and everyone shared maps, levels and skins... well that interferes with making super profits and selling skins to kids in fortnite... so screw you gamers, say epic. To see EPIC games, the once cool company of nerds that made FPS games for other nerds go from tools, level editors and sdks, to locked down games like fortnite to scam the stupid... is quite the sea change in gaming.

General computing on the PC and gaming went to shit because computer illiterate and irrational people got internet. Thereby feeding the criminal practices of valve and company. That's reality, games are literally being destroyed.

 

[snoopy7548]

You bring up something I’ve been thinking about lately - retro gaming. I have a huge, working, and largely intact collection of Commodore systems from the 80s. They’re boxed up currently but I’ve been thinking about pulling a couple out and doing some retro gaming. Or, with space at a premium in my office, maybe I’ll just run emulators for now. I love old arcade, Atari, and Commodore games.

Speaking of Quake, I can still remember when it came out and still remember when I got my first Voodoo card from Incredible Universe (who remembers them?) and loaded up GLQuake. It blew me away.

Retro gaming is great because you can do it in small doses. You don't have to sit down and spend 25 minutes before you actually get into the game - you can just pick it up and play.

I remember playing Quake 2 and being in awe of the lighting from the blaster shots. It completely blew my 12 year old mind.

 

[DigDog]

All these things you say are true.

I think there has been a shift in the userbase of modern games. When i was young, videogames were for nerds. Never mind the D&D rpgs and NWN and the gold box SSI games and Fallout, just playing with a machine was for nerds. People couldn't wrap their head around "load * ,8,1" but would rather play football.
The people who designed games were nerds, the people who played them were nerds.
You'd have a few jocks playing coin-op arcade on sunday, but it was occasional, and they were more into pinball than videogames.
Games of this era required some weird mental gymnastics to play; there were no tutorial, generally required external per-case knowledge (like most rpgs)

Then Halo changed everything. Halo, COD, MOH, these games appealed to the jock and to a ton of casuals that: did not own a desktop w/ gpu, didnt want to read or interpret stats, only wanted an hour of fun, and had no knowledge of non-pc game culture; and to top it off, they were *easy*.

The games that i played were hard. Boy were they hard. Each game was a challenge, to figure out how to beat it. NOT all games i bought, did i manage to beat.
No such thing for Halo.

Because of this new userbase, who burns through content (because that content cannot try to *stop* the player), games were now made differently than before. No more of 3 friends sitting in front of a pc trying to solve a Day of The Tentacle riddle for 2 days, but smooth flowing "immersive" gameplay that does not try to punish you, doesnt force you to learn any new skill. Because some money guy paid a team of asians to design that content, and by god the players need to see it.

I speak with people at work, and nobody can name one hardcore game they play. Maybe Dark Souls at best, but mostly it's all casual, easy, for kids games that anyone can utterly beat.
I still have not beaten Xaero in Q3A on Ultraviolence, much less Nightmare.

So the challenge aspect was removed because to casuals, difficult isnt fun.
Which is BS, because i am PROUD of my lap times in WipeOut 2097, but thats another thing casuals will never experience.

Changing the typology of content also changed the associated costs, making game production an expensive affair, governed by money people, not gamers.


One other thing is that the wow factor is no longer there. In 1998, (?) GT2 came out and it was incredible. Ive lived through the b&w tv era and videogames were alien technology; but tech has stopped advancing so fast, and so games aren't as "amazing" as they used to be. Thats fairly reasonable, but it does help compound the problem.

And because of the money involved, there's no more of "just a bunch of guys" making an amazing game. Rebels, who didnt care if you liked it or if you ragequit. Developers who hid things, who made it difficult on purpose for the purpose of fun, not for the purpose of frustration. And who could add any crazy subject because there was no censorship.


Like many cool things, games used to be a niche product, then they had success. Too much success, and the morons started buying them. And morons, they dont know a good thing, they just buy crap.

 

[gorcorps]

I've played more games this year than I have in a while, it's honestly been one of the best years for games in a long time. Spider man, God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Super Smash Brothers have all been pretty solid. And I keep dumping time into Rocket League on the switch... it's the only online multiplayer game I really play.

I still don't play like I used to, but when the right games come along I still enjoy them. And I've continued to play smaller games on the Switch, which just makes it so much easier to play games than a full blown home console.

 

[DrMrLordX]

You can still get some decent games, sometimes at a great price.

Been playing Dishonored 2 (got it on sale) and I am not disappointed. It isn't an old or crusty IP either. The first game was from, what, 2013? I have Dead Souls 3 waiting for me after I'm done with Dishonored 2. Hell Arkane apparently stripped out the DRM from Dishonored 2 as well. Rather nice of em.

Also @zink77 do you keep posting the same thing over and over again? Honest question, we've seen that stuff before in other threads . . .

@DigDog adding difficulty to games nowadays can be uh . . . difficult? Making things harder sometimes just results in bullet sponge enemies and other boring stuff. There are some "stupid hard" games out there for people that want to abuse themselves, like Dead Cells (which apparently got even harder on the last patch, which is one of the reasons why I haven't gotten it yet) and some parts of Hollow Knight.

 

[Igo69]

This year is going to be a lot of fun with new big games coming out...

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I've played more games this year than I have in a while, it's honestly been one of the best years for games in a long time. Spider man, God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2

Those 3 games have dominated my gaming time since release. Playing the Spiderman DLC at the moment. And, I was doubtful I would buy a console again after my son switched to PC years back. Yet, here I am, enjoying the games tremendously, even the graphics and performance are not holding the experience back.

Enjoying Assassin's Creed: Black Flag on PC, but stability on any of my cards is difficult to maintain. Be it 1060 6GB, RX580 8GB, or Vega 56. Every combo of "fixes" forcing triple buffering, compatibility mode, disabling settings like PhysX, whatev, seems to get wonky after a while. I will probably have to disconnect the system I choose for it, so no more driver or windows updates can be installed. I will try win 7 pro on my 4770k system and see if that helps. Worth the hassle because it is by far the best of the series I have played thus far. Total War: Warhammer 1&2 consumed well over 500 hrs of my life as well. You just have to find the right games to keep you going. I never got into RTS so finding something in the genre that hooked me freshened things up nicely.

As far as games getting to easy, definitely agree for triple A stuff. Games like Cuphead are out there though. Lots of indy titles that seem to hearken back to the old school as well. I rarely do MP, as being toxic and a troll seem to be admired instead of shunned.

 

[DigDog]

Does anyone here remember SWEATING when playing videogames? Palms skinned by the arcade stick? Cheers of joy at beating a level?

That's the kind of difficulty i speak of.

To be totally honest, *i am* too old for games like Super Meat Boy; but i am glad they exist.
That which i do not find appealing in MW2 isnt due to age though, it's not like when i dont want to play a bullet hell game because im too old to get invested, but because the writing and design in most AAA titles is childish and *clearly* written for someone who's never seen another product from that genre (or doesnt care about it being identical to others like it).

 

[gorcorps]

@DigDog adding difficulty to games nowadays can be uh . . . difficult? Making things harder sometimes just results in bullet sponge enemies and other boring stuff. There are some "stupid hard" games out there for people that want to abuse themselves, like Dead Cells (which apparently got even harder on the last patch, which is one of the reasons why I haven't gotten it yet) and some parts of Hollow Knight.

I like that games aren't terribly hard anymore. I don't have time to dump into a challenge like I used to, and if I play a game I want just enough challenge to require me to learn how to play, but if I get frustrated then chances are I won't finish the game because I'm not going to waste my time replaying the same area over and over until I figure it out.

 

[gorcorps]

Those 3 games have dominated my gaming time since release. Playing the Spiderman DLC at the moment. And, I was doubtful I would buy a console again after my son switched to PC years back. Yet, here I am, enjoying the games tremendously, even the graphics and performance are not holding the experience back.

How's the DLC? The reviews for it seem pretty middle of the road, so I haven't bothered yet.

 

[zink77]

@zink77 do you keep posting the same thing over and over again? Honest question, we've seen that stuff before in other threads . . .

Because our rights and freedoms on the PC are being undermined, the cute theft of software valve pulled with steam in 2004 is now infecting the operating system. That's bad jew jew for us old computer nerds.

Many of us in the 90's would have never imagined our species would be so subhumanly stupid to hand over it's rights to own it's own stuff to a criminal out of control oligarchy. Maybe you want to be spied on by windows 10 and have even more of your civil rights eroded. But for those of us who understand the political implications of the theft and undermining of our rights and freedoms by these companies, anyone who is a traditional PC nerd should be downright pissed we're heading towards dystopia.

You don't seem to feel threatened that the PC is turned into a tool that can be used in turnkey dictatorship to monitor all citizens 24/7. When companies can forcibly remove your rights and make you naked 24/7. I'm going to call bullshit.

The fact that everyone is so complacent and apathetic is pretty alarming.

PC's are our private property and private space, and Microsoft has no business trying to turn the OS into spyware infested device.

 

[Fenixgoon]

I like that games aren't terribly hard anymore. I don't have time to dump into a challenge like I used to, and if I play a game I want just enough challenge to require me to learn how to play, but if I get frustrated then chances are I won't finish the game because I'm not going to waste my time replaying the same area over and over until I figure it out.

I agree, games dont need to be super difficult to be enjoyable. Making something just the right degree of difficulty is probably harder than too hard or too easy.
Not every game needs to be super dramworld to be enjoyed.
I'm enjoying dark souls, but only because I'm using a guide. I'd never figure the game out otherwise - I have neither the time nor the patience.