Games aren't what they used to be.

The title is misleading, this isn't a "back in my day" speech. I'd say it's more just a guy complaining he personally doesn't find the same enjoyment playing games that he used to. I still love developing games, I've been working on Project Warlike for three years and it's coming together awesomely. When it comes to playing games, however, I find myself losing attention pretty quickly, and my mind drifts. Games just don't sink their teeth into me like they used to.

Wondering if anyone else has had a similar experience. What thoughts did/do you have on it? Life getting busy? Just not having as strong of an imagination as we age? Am I just a cranky 36 year old? Probably some combination of all of them.

 

Depends on the game. I played Elex a few months back and had a blast. Currently playing Persona 4 and finding it hard to play for long periods of time.

I think part of it is I feel bad about spending so much time on entertainment...but I don't really have this problem browsing the internet (mostly reddit), so I don't know.

 

I feel exactly the same way. I'm definitely not at an age where I can say "back in my day" but I do feel that I am less and less invested. Stories don't pull me in like they used to. Honestly the last game that pulled me in was Rage 2 (which kinda leaves a sour taste in my mouth cause it's not even that good imo)

I may come back to a good game here and there like Slay the Spire, but it's just not the same

I'm not going to say I know the answer, but the more and more I develop games the less magical they become for me, possibly? It could also be the quality of games more recently, or there may be something to say about the way we scroll through lists of games on online stores/game streaming platforms.

Hard to say, but definitely sucks.

 

I just wanna tell a history...and you?

 

I would say the main issue is that many games these days lack the inspiration they used to have, I know that might sound a bit weird, but, when you think about it, back in the older days off development, the development teams were much smaller, and they were more likely to take risks in favor of creative freedom since many game studios were more flexible with game creativity back then, but with teams of hundreds of people working on projects these days and the fact that, let's be honest here, graphics is what sells today, not quality, the games end up being much more diluted and lacking in the personality they used to have, not to mention, if a game company is going to be funding a game, it's going to specifically fund the departments that they have data saying will make the game sell more copies *cough* graphics *cough* so we have a flood of triple AAA games with a focus on visuals rather than game design, which is why we have so many games that look good but don't feel good to play. Even companies like Nintendo have to pour millions of dollars into graphics these days just so they can compete, which is taking away from their focus on play coming first, which is also why some of their games like the newest Kirby game didn't do so well. If you have 600 people working on a game and only because they're getting paid to do it, the game isn't going to be personal, and the players will be able to feel that. If you want games that get you excited to play them look for older triple AAA indie games or new Indie projects today, for example, I just got this game Shiren the wanderer 5 on switch, and it's one of my favorite games today, it came out for the DS originally but they ported it to switch, and it's the only game I still play consistently today.

Also sorry that comment was super long, just wanted to be specific

 

10-15 years ago the incremental improvements on games were much larger and games kept a feeling of freshness for it.

For me i think it’s that there are so many games that none are amazingly different from one another, each game is only a minor tweak, reskin or minor improvement on the last in any given genre.

games that manage to find a new space, a new genre or that really redefine a genre are still interesting and fun for me.

another thing i think holds games back is that developers, including myself feel they need to hit all the usual features. Mini goals, leaderboards, reward systems, etc etc and all those features make all games across all genres feel the same, even if their game mechanics are vastly different.

 

(opinion)
It is called growing older.

When you're a kid everything is new and amazing and leaves a huge impact.
When you're an adult 2 decades later, then.... you've already seen a ton of stuff, that rose your quality bar, and it is hard to impress you with anything as you've seen it all, and every new game is going to be a rehash of elements you've already experienced.

There will be still stuff that manages to impress you, but you won't run into it often. it is likely that your tastes will change. A kid is more likely enjoy being put into shoes of some heroes and black and white morality. An adult is more likely to enjoy some construction sandbox and nuanced story without clearly defined good/bad guys.

But that's just an opinion.

 

I hardly play games these days, and when I do it's certainly not in an addicted way. I do think there's a different mentality that goes into playing and creating games, the same way that a magician's experience of performing magic is different from someone who enjoys watching it. Nothing wrong with it at all, it's an evolution.

Besides, it would hardly be a pleasant experience to find that I like the same things in my 30s that I did when I was 13. One expects that meaningful experiences change over one's lifetime.

All the best games have layers that cater to different kinds of people without losing cohesion - like the shooter-looter mechanics of Mass Effect coupled with its in-depth character interaction and storylines - but it's arguable that many modern games have focused very much on one or a few layers that appeal to the lowest common denominator, and rely on sheer marketing to reel everyone else in. The same way that movies are as well.

It's certainly not an era of any real innovation in all the forms of art and entertainment, but that's a far more complex problem than it appears on the surface.

 

I think your mind is just focused on different priorities now that you have to work for a living.

When younger you have time to waste and you look for "something to get into."
Now you are into something all day and you don't have energy to waste on fruitless pursuits.

That's how I feel anyway.

I don't think games are any better or worse nowadays than they were 10-15 years ago. But all the "progression" related stuff is a huge turn off for me. Especially if it's only a reward for time-grind. Like a dangling carrot, how insulting. I know it's empty and goes nowhere.
Now these tricks are in like every game. Makes games feel icky, like overpriced sugary junk food at a carnival.

So if the core elements of the game are not immediately satisfying, I stop playing.

 

About a year ago I started playing chess again after it "blew up on twitch". I generally play 3 minute 'blitz'. It's some of the most satisfying, exciting gameplay I've run into in years. I actually sweat sometimes when the clock is low and the adrenaline kicks in.

Early on in the pandemic, a group of my friends and I all started playing League of Legends together. We played 2-3 nights a week every week. Most of the group hadn't played any games in years. We were all very old and simply terrible... and it was a blast, definitely some of the best gaming fun I've had in the last 20 years.

Both of those games:
- are short limited sessions (chess is 6m games, LoL was 30m games)
- little to no in game progression
- competitive against other people
- player skill driven
- very very high skill cap

I have just as much fun playing these kinds of 'pure' games now as I did way back when.

If the hooks of the game are: immersion, story, progression - I tend to find these way less fun than I did as a kid. Although if there's a real gem, I can still get hooked every now and then (XCOM, DoS2).

 

This is definitely true. My uncle and I went to a salsa concert last night. He's a jazz musician who has travelled all around the world playing. In the middle of the music he asked me if I could separate out a specific instrument and listen to that one, and figure out what it's doing. Through the course of the concert he wound up telling me about his view of Latin music - how it was all centered around the 2/2 beat and more specifically the bass. For different songs he would stop and point out the vamp or montuno as it was happening, or after the fact point out that they never returned to a certain rhythm or if they did.

And up in front of us, right in front of the stage, a hundred people or more were just dancing around, just enjoying the music. Their experience wasn't remotely the same as ours.

Interesting. I actually really want to get back into Oxygen Not Included and No Man's Sky because I really enjoy the gameplay for each, but I feel bad on some level spending time on a game with no real narrative to "learn" from (both in the narrative itself and how the gameplay is structured around the narrative).

 

I started playing chess this year, and it's definitely addicting. It doesn't really serve the same function as video games for me though. Chess is a logical puzzle, whereas I enjoy video games mainly for immersion.

Agree about the session length, I just don't have time to waste. If there's one thing I cannot put up with anymore it's grind. If a game doesn't have an atmosphere that's out of this world, the moment I have to collect trinkets to progress I'm out. Like I tried recently to play Far Cry 3, it's supposed to be the best Far Cry game out there, but as soon as the intro story was done and I start getting shopping lists from NPCs, that was it.

 

LOL!

To each their own, for me, my favorite video games were always about competition and skill. As a youth, Starcraft was probably my number 1 of all time. Chess, League, Starcraft, they all scratch a similar itch for me, the hook is building skill and whupping your opponents.

 

It comes and goes for me (I'm 45.). There are times when I still get sucked in to a game and it's all I do for weeks on end. Other times the PlayStation sits idle for months at a time. It's definitely less common these days for me to get really "into" a game and stay up all night playing it the way I used to.

 

I've thought about that very thing and I feel more like I just get bored with the games usually at some point?

Another fair point, maybe I've just seen behind the hood somewhat, and my enjoyment has somewhat "leveled up" to where I only really get satisfaction from creating? I guess it could be worse, if this is correct.

I think there's some truth in this. It's also a challenge now since competition has become so fierce even among indies that you almost have to internally battle the draw to "figure out how to make the game profitable" which is necessary, but it will eventually become self defeating if taken too far.

I feel this is very true. If you don't get this "unexplored space" then you better really have some human element speaking through the game from the developers. You're either fresh, or you make a connection.

Yeah I watch my kids play and can clearly see they're loving it all like I did, so clearly this is true.

Yeah, this!

Thanks for all the input. It's always nice to realize you're not alone in something you dislike XD.

 

Yup, been there, done that:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/wha...-can-still-hook-jaded-gaming-veterans.544338/

It's temporarily better for me, because I recently found 2 games that I can still enjoy. One is Deathloop, as I like almost everything by Arkane. The other is The Witcher 3. I was super bored by The Witcher 1 + 2 and only tried Witcher 3 for three reasons:
1) the netflix adaptations got me invested in the lore
2) Yahtzee, one of my favorite reviewers was bored by 1 and 2 too but had some good things to say about the third
3) iirc @angrypenguin once said he wanted to just play it a bit for research and ended up sinking a lot of time into it because he liked it so much

Tell me something to sell me on Elex. I already own it from a bundle, but wasn't interested enough to give it a go yet.

Personally I think it is one of the worst in the series and I played a couple of them. The characters are unlikeable, the story is cringe and the gameplay is grindy imho. I preferred FC 2, 4, and 5. Haven't played FC 1 or New Dawn and didn't finish FC Primal.

Maybe play such games while listening to interesting podcasts or GDC talks, that way you can still feel somewhat productive.

 

I didn't mind the psychedelic vibe and the main antagonist is a great character, but yeah most of the characters were superficial and the story went into the shallows as soon as the intro was over.

What pulled me right out of it (and it seems to be common nowadays) is where you are part of a tense, gripping intro and then suddenly some random NPC arrives and is like 'ok, we got the memo that you're the hero, here's you pistol, we need 20 mushrooms and 5 wombat hides to make a backpack, now don't forget to shoot everything in sight and check the pockets before you leave'. There's no respect whatsoever for the atmosphere, it just gets thrown out like a flimsy prop at some point when all the checkpoints come out. I did like the mushroom cave mission though, just because everything got weird, but after that I'd had enough.

The worst one of all (fortunately I never bought it) was Mass Effect Andromeda, it has an intro worthy of an science fiction movie, you are pathfinders ready to make contact with the rest of the universe and do justice to the human race as their representatives, and somehow three seconds after landing you're already spam-shooting and diving around like you came to hunt rabbits or something. There's no way I'm going to spend my time on that sort of thing when I have stuff to get done.

 

Disco Elysium is apparently also crazy good. I tried it last week, and that's something.

The tastes change heavily with time. Right now I often just circle around towns in X-Plane in VR and that's it. And generally I feel like I'm more in a mood to fool around in some sort of sand box rather than saving or destroying the world via story.

Spoiler

Generally all farcry games starting with the third one are reskins. Same gameplay every time, with some heavy handed story. Primal had unique atmosphere although I didn't finish it either.

Far Cry 2 was a bit unique when I played it and I actually took that more seriously, but then again, it was a long time ago.

Far Cry 1 is very different from the rest, in terms of story and gameplay. Might be worth checking out.

Far Cry 5.... I have hard time maintaining suspension of disbelief, when there's a character that can take full auto heavy machine gun fire into the head and survive.

Ubisoft does have amazing artists, but uh.... the gameplay and story - not so much.

I recall an article about somoene who gave a little kid GTA 5 to play. The kid drove the Ambulance and had a blast doing it. Didn't touch anything else in the game even.

 

Classic Eurojank, so technically very unstable, and combat is punishing - sometimes in valid ways, sometimes in really stupid ways. There are several factions set up in different towns, and there are a lot of named NPCs who give out quests, all generally related to their role--and there's a lot of interconnectedness, where different people in a faction know what you did for another during a quest (sometimes this is done well, sometimes it's unrealistic in that they shouldn't have been able to find out--but either way, plenty of "choices and consequences"). Typically there are multiple ways to complete a quest. I thought the worldbuilding and lore were pretty good, and towards the end the implications of some of that (worldbuilding and lore) get really interesting.

Good idea, thanks!

 

"Games aren't what they are used to be?"

Excluding the question mark in your statement, I agree with it, as it covers all genres. And interestingly, there are alot of gamers who will agree with it too.

But in some cases, I don't think that age, or nostalgia for older games, has anything to do with feeling this way. Alot of the modern AAA games and sequels, do sort of suck. And while those games might not interest everyone, we have to remember to, that each individual has their own tastes and style of gaming.

Especially when it comes to the fighting games, that have been released, for like the past 20 years or so, and a bit before that. Alot of them are overhyped, end up in tournaments, but the gameplay in them are repetitive, semi boring and unfortunately kinda suck. Especially from a game design and mechanics standpoint. And alot of them are not as advanced or as deep, as the older fighting games, or prequels.

Like for example, compare Soul Calibur 1 to Soul Calibur 6. There is a reason why Soul Calibur 1 got 10 out if 10, and SC2 to SC6, couldn't even get that 10 out of 10 rating. The gameplay of the first game, interestingly, is actually more ahead, more deep and more advanced, than the sequels that were released afterwards.

What that means, is that a game from 1998, is actually more complete and more groundbreaking, than a sequel that was released in 2003 called Soul Calibur 2, or Soul Calibur 6 that was released in 2017.

As many gamers including myself, and recently Maximillian Dood himself has said, Soul Calibur 2 takes all of the great things, that made Soul Calibur 1 great, and unfortunately throws it all in the trash, and replaces everything with fake hype and mediocrity (which is sad). In a sense, this sort of represents the gaming industry for the past 2 or so decades.

But interestingly, there are gamers out there, who will pay over $60 for those type of mediorcre games, especially if the game has pretty graphics, and lots of hype surrounding it. While others find them boring, and want quality for their money.

And yes I am going to say it, Virtua Fighter has unfortunately gone down this route too. VF is a game, that is not just very advanced, but holds the attention of the person playing it. As they released VF5 Final Showdown, a huge chunk like 80% plus of their die hard fanbase, realised the game was deliberately, and heavily dumbed down, found the game mediorce and boring, and left. And for those who didn't know, the Virtua Fighter fanbase, is like the most picky, yet criticaI fighting game fanbase out there. The fact that they hated what VF had become and left, is a big sign that something is wrong.

I can talk about this a bit more, but that might end up being a semi long, game designer/gamer rant.

 

Actually if you're in a situation where you need to listen something else, it means you aren't fully involved in the game, and that might mean trying something else.

Regarding No Man's Sky, it does have a narrative and pieces of lore to hunt, but it takes a lot of time to get them all, and it is more like piecing it all in your mind afterwards.

If you're looking for an "unwind game" where you can listen to stuff and relax, there's Euro Truck 2... low involvement, you could play it like asteroid mining in Elite, pretty much, in semi auto mode. Sometimes that's all that's needed to unwind.

 

Yeah, I get that. A few reasons.

First is the whole "there's nothing new under the sun" thing. There's certainly stuff which feels new, but there's a heck of a lot which is just improved re-hashes of the same old stuff. Or, in many cases, inferior rehashes. So many games these days are just re-combined things from other games with some technical improvement. That stuff only feels new if you weren't there for the originals.

Another is that I have more stuff competing for my time. So playing games gets less of it, and they have to be providing a stronger experience to win my attention over other stuff. Sometimes this is a "life got busier" thing, but it's also a positive "life got richer" thing. A game has to be really good to compete with other stuff I could be doing.

Another is that as a person who makes games I spend a lot of time in front of screens, and getting away from them is good.

And some of it is me. I've already experienced a lot of what many types of games have to offer. I can spend large amounts of time to experience incremental updates as things march on, or I can spend my limited time experiencing new stuff. As games do new stuff I'll be there checking it out, and as a developer I'll be doing what I can to contribute to that. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with turning your attention elsewhere in between those moments, and doing so is how we get new experience to bring into our work.

So do that, and feel good about it.

 

When I feel like that, I turn off the game and go load my dishwasher or whatever. I owe no loyalty to a game which fails to keep my interest.

Either play something that engages you enough to be a positive experience, or stop wasting your time and do something else with it.

 

But @EternalAmbiguity said "I actually really want to get back into Oxygen Not Included and No Man's Sky because I really enjoy the gameplay for each", so I would say it's definitely a positive experience even without podcast support. And for me personally I discover interesting podcasts and talks that I want to listen to almost faster than I can go through. Normally I would listen to those while I paint, but when I'm done with work or on weekends I'll play a podcast-compatible game like Dark Souls to keep my hands occupied while listening. If I tried just listening to podcasts, I'd quickly fall asleep or get so tired/distracted I can't retain the information well.

 

So at 27 I can find still myself pretty enraptured by a game, though I find myself getting more and more impatient with ones that commit the common video taboos and often quit them to never play them again. And typical experiences like FPS's, the 'Ubisoft Experience', etc, I'm pretty much over them these days.

My three main time sinks these days are Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Valheim, and occasionally pottering around in Stardew Valley. All games I can spend a lot of time in individually.

My issue is that there's not enough games that go deep enough into what I love, which is specifically crafting. I looove absurdly deep and complicated crafting systems. If I have to go back 10 steps to make that one thing I need for something else I need to make, that's the good stuff. Think Factorio with the full angelbob mod suite; that's what I'm talking about.

There's loads of survival-craft games that are heavy on the survival but shockingly light on the crafting. But I want the opposite, light on the survival and absurdly heavy on the crafting. Which is pretty much why I'm here, to make my own... 'crafting-survival' game that satiates my own itch, though I plan to make the difficulty of both the survival and crafting mechanics adjustable to the players wants.

But I'm often left looking at my Steam library and letting out a sigh when I don't see anything to suit my wants. Same goes with the store with 90% of the games that seem interesting being stuck in early access, which is generally a 'do not touch' sign unless I know by word of mouth that the game is in a perfect playable and nearly complete state (Valheim is one example).

Though I entirely expect as I get older for my tastes to keep on changing. I've already dropped Magic the Gathering as a hobby since the pandemic started.

 

I'm not really looking to unwind, in fact thinking about it it's kind of the opposite: I don't find Persona 4's gameplay very engaging, so while I'm pushing through to get to the story (which I DO want to experience), the gameplay makes it a chore.

ONI is definitely engaging--one could have multiple projects all happening at once. NMS isn't really complex, or wasn't when I played (I actually did beat it), but I found exploring very fun (and who knows what it's like with the many updates they've made in the last few years).

X4 is another I want to jump back into, but it's so deep and would take so long I feel like it would be more productive to play more narrative-based games.

Yeah they're definitely positive experiences, it's more a psychological compulsion to make the most use of my time.

 

I agree, games aren't what they used to be- or, at least most of them aren't. I often can only put about 1-3 hours into a game before I start losing interest in it- with the exclusion of Halo, of course

I can only ever put hours upon hours into addictive farming simulators nowadays, e.g. Stardew Valley or Rune Factory.

 

Oxygen not included didn't work for me at all. I sank out a couple of hours and ended up not having any fun with it. Not sure why to this day. Just too slow uneventful.

Also, there is a game called Oni.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oni_(video_game)

It was a fairly decent one, I believe. Good beat-em-up.

Spoiler

If you played it for a while, chances are you've unlocked a better start. For example, it is possible to start with headquarters unlocked and then it is back to playing space overlord on the sector map.

Assembling SETA again, though... now that's something I have no desire to go through again.

 

I only played X3: Terran Conflict a bit, and that game made me start to consider "excel spreadsheet export" to be a red-flag feature on any game x]

 

That monolithic diversity is working just dandy.

 

I have to move around genres to get enjoyment. I used to just play like FPS's or MMO's, but now I play pretty much everything. I branch off into genres I haven't given much thought to.

I have been meaning to give Elex a shot it was on my radar when it came out, but then got review bombed and I forgot about it. Persona 4 Golden is a different breed, those games are not for everyone.

 

I hardly ever play games anymore... it turns out solving gamedev problems to get some pixels moving around on the screen the way I want is a more challenging and rewarding "game" experience then actually playing games.

 

I apologize that I skimmed most of the replies, but I am in total agreement of what @angrypenguin says.

I have no problem dropping my priorities to play a fully engaging game, but it has to be *that* good. Finding them is the real task though. I've started and stopped dozens of games in the past few years after just 15-20 minutes of play, thinking it's not for me (and sometimes "not for me *yet*"). I'll retry some games later if I'm in a different mood, but for the most part they do not tend to stick. Most games can be gotten for dirt cheap or even free nowadays, so no harm in taking a trial run for the low prices. However, there are a handful of games that play to our interests and are still at full price, especially during their marketing push. Those are a little bit more difficult to resist, because if the game doesn't engage you as well as you thought it would, you're out that money. But usually my answer is "no time", I'll wait. If it's a great game beyond its marketing push, it'll stick around, and I'll get it at a cheaper price.

From another angle, there are indeed games where I feel like if I were to sit down and enjoy it, I'll get sucked in so much that I'll forget my other life priorities, so I decide to just not play it altogether. I spent about 30 minutes on the Factorio demo, and I completely get how people can get caught in the reward loop, like Civ's "one more turn". That's when it starts to get unhealthy, and that's a completely different topic altogether.

@neginfinity On a side note, Disco Elysium has basically bubbled up to the top of my list via the Internet-word-of-mouth ever since its release. I'm excited to finally give it a try on Switch next month.

 

Yeah sorry, I meant Oxygen Not Included. I love interacting with all the systems, especially the AI for the Dupes - I'm a big fan of quasi-programmable agents in games (Dragon Age Origins with the Tactics mod, Majesty 2). And my background is chemistry and biology so it's right up my alley.

I did get to an okay place with X4, setting up the space station where the black hole is or whatever, but just the process of playing the game is pretty slow so it feels like I should be more productive. And then there's the fact that it's still getting fixes and improvements (that's actually a blocker for ONI and NMS as well--I want to experience the "best" version of the game so it's easy to want to hold off).

(Elex)I wasn't aware it got review bombed, and I'm not seeing anything online. What was it about?

(P4G)I've played my fair share of JRPGs and VNs so I'm okay with that side of things, but the dungeon crawling just isn't to my taste.

 

As a side note, Persona 4 is among what I consider to be the top 3 best games of all time. Or at least considered at one point.

That schedule thing and calendar events and trying to balance it all together were truly amazing at the time I played.