Losing Interest In Games - A Natural Progression? 320
MotherInferior writes "I'm 27, soon to be 28. I used to fiend over the newest games and eagerly play whatever I could get my hands on. Team Fortress Classic, Civilization, WarCraft, these were all games that I could literally lose myself for days in. I still drool over the newest games at Best Buy, but now that I actually have the money to buy them, I find myself saying, 'Nah, I'll just play what I've got,' or 'Y'know, I'd rather design my own game then play someone else's.' Even still, I don't really play the games I have. What's up with that? I'm sure my mom would sagely say (with some satisfaction in her voice), 'Wellll, you're just growing up...' Am I not as capable of having fun as I once was, or what? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy gaming, but I can tell there's some kind of trend happening. Will there be gaming Viagra in my future, I wonder?"
Disillusionment with current crop of games (Score:5, Interesting)
its natural (Score:5, Interesting)
The last game I actually purchased for my PC was War3 expansion. The next game I'm planning on buying is either Doom3 / HL2. Other games have slightly caught my interest (was eyeing galactic civilizations for a while), but I just don't have the time to get lost in a big game, unless it's something I really want to get lost in.
the same phenomena typically happens with music. mid 20s and you start listening to what you have rather than what's new...
Minor case of burnout. (Score:4, Interesting)
Find something to do that's differnt than what you normally spend time doing.
Sit and play with lego
Read a book
Work on a puzzle
Build a model
Walk around outside
Take some time and just wander around a nearby mall
Re:Disillusionment with current crop of games (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, many of the innovative game companies of old (Bullfrog, Sierra, Psygnosis...) are all but dead. Their hollowed-out carcasses have been commandeered by money-grubbing shareholders simply using their brand to try to absorb as much money as possible. None of the original talent on which the company was built remains. It's sad, really, but new talent will eventually arise.
Gaming is in a rut (Score:3, Interesting)
Combine that with the constant nagging voice in the back of our heads, telling us we should be doing something more productive, and it can be a battle.
Personally, I believe we are all just wandering around the lobby, waiting for the doors to open to true, immersive virtual reality. We have seen the pretty sunsets on our CRT, now we want to feel the wind in our hair.
Television (Score:2, Interesting)
I've never been much of a gamer, but I'm 23, and I've noticed the exact thing happening to me with television. I used to follow a lot of series, now I haven't got a clue when anything is on, and just watch whatever's interesting on the rare occasions I happen to sit down in front of the telly (and if there's nothing interesting, I just do something else).
Mostly, the time I used to spend in front of the telly has been taken over by the Internet, books, and programming. I think that's healthier, the latter is more creative, and all three allow me to go at my own pace, rather than sitting there passively waiting to be spoon-fed information slowly.
Wanting what you got (Score:4, Interesting)
It just isn't that exiting anymore when you don't have to decide whether to buy QuakeIII or Unreal Tournament2003. You buy them both, and get the short end of the stick, because you don't have the time to play both, or find it hard to decide which one to play at any particular moment. A problem which increases in size the more games you buy.
For us with families, the time spent playing games gets ever shorter, which is why we put higher demands on the games we play. Which in turn leads to the conclusion that all of a sudden, games are no longer that good, because you cannot find the time to really get into more than a few games per season.
I buy fewer games nowadays, but instead I really try to play through them. This pays off most of the time.
Born again gamer.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am 31 btw...
all about time and getting people together (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, games get no respect from the world at large. Even though I'm mostly a social gamer, though I will play through the occasional one player adventure, my soon-to-be-ex-wife cited that as one of the (minor) issues, my devoting hours to gaming, despite her own f***ing introvert need to sometimes burn hours watching the crappiest of movies on TV to unwind/recharge.
My 8 bit NES is alive and kicking (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm currently playing in the pennant race on Bases Loaded. I just finished beating Metroid and Contra (again). (For the latter, yes, I still use Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A.) Anyway the list goes on.
I've found that I can get all kinds of games for the NES from people that think they're worthless. Without even trying, I've picked up about 30 additional titles, along with several extra controllers and even a separate console that I use for spare parts when the need arises.
Lots of fun, and I have no plans to upgrade to a "modern" system in the near future.
Re:Disillusionment with current crop of games (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the companies you mention as the current innovators, and then look at their titles over the past few years. Id: Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Q2, Q3, now Doom 3. Epic: UT, UT2k3, now UT2k4. Blizzard: Diablo 2, WarCraft 3.
These companies have succumbed to the lure of money as well. Instead of innovating, they let others do it, and then simply evolve. The UT line is trying to follow the sports-game model of yearly releases with modest improvements. Id has turned into a factory for new game engines, with other companies like Valve putting those engines to use to create the games people seem to enjoy (though Valve is creating their own engine now), and with Half-Life's success id has decided to build a more story-based game, reverting to the Doom label (and taking quite a bit of lead from the survival horror genre popular on consoles). Blizzard's Diablo 2 was an evolution of Diablo, which manages to be the only title of it's kind that really holds up well in the market. WarCraft 3 was a move in a direction that many others had taken, in a slightly different way, not only moving to 3D but to smaller numbers of units with hero units at the center (an idea used by many other RTS games earlier, but the smaller numbers of units can also be attributed to the limitations of Blizzard's 3D engines).
None of the original talent on which the company was built remains. It's sad, really, but new talent will eventually arise.
This is the real truth of the matter. Eventually some relatively unknown company will come forth to take the place of id, Epic, and Blizzard. After all, id and Epic came out of the shareware scene and Blizzard was a console developer in their early years. Eventually someone will come seemingly out of nowhere to take the top of the pile in the PC game development world, and more than likely when that happens it'll be after releasing numerous moderately successful games just as it was with these three companies.
Happens with music, too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Disillusionment with current crop of games (Score:5, Interesting)
Cavedog made the first movements towards MMO RTS, but at the same time didn't go the full distance to actually making it possible for thousands of players to battle each other at once (instead relegating the battles to smaller groups with the overall war being handled outside of the game), yet no one seems to have really picked up on the idea and made it reality (now someone will point out an MMORTS that I haven't seen before).
I believe that MMO could be the future of many genres, but I also believe that it will truly come into it's own from the more common sources, rather than from the companies like Sony just trying to cash in on the trend. I think the real breakthrough will come when someone comes up with a method for distributing the load between company servers and independant servers, reducing or eliminating the subscription fees, and giving players more reason than simple level treadmills to continue playing. Most current MMO games are made simply to keep people playing (and paying) rather than to provide interesting and entertaining gameplay, and I think that trend needs to be squashed before it really becomes as revolutionary as online multiplayer gaming itself.
Some nature, some circumstance (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Disillusionment with current crop of games (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, Warcraft was a little rough around the edges, and Warcraft II polished that up. But what did War3 give us? heros? A mechanism introduced essentially in the war2 expansion and starcraft?
Diablo was a refreshing change of pace from the RPG-stale early 90s - but what was Diablo2 and what took them so long? Sure, it was fun like the original, but it wasn't so much an advancement as a souped-up 'update'.
Why did Blizzard can the original design for War3, with the hero-centric focus? To me, that sounded really cool. But Blizzard chose to rehash the tried and true with newer graphics and keep the heroes. They just aren't interested in being on the cutting edge.
Sure, people loved war3 and I don't begrudge them that. It just isn't so much an 'advancement'.
And Id and Epic... well hell - They might be fingered as the predominate cause of the deterioration of innovation. their progress is entirely iterative and they don't even bother wrapping a story around their products anymore.
Again, I don't mean to downplay their significance. Indeed the skill with which Id and Epic craft (and resell) technology is unparalleled.
Even Molyneaux (by way of Bullfrog) doesn't seem to be innovating. Black and White had a fairly innovative concept in the avatar, but that was long years ago, and prior to that was a veritable avalanche of incremental tweaks to Populous. His mindchild Big Blue Box still hasn't delivered their overhyped 'advancement' for RPG gaming.
In every interview, the founders of those companies nearly unanimously claim that advancements will always come from small teams - unheard of teams. And frankly, they're right. Look at the half-life mods: Natural Selection, Counterstrike, et al - They're massively more innovative than half-life itself. Look at how desert combat has all but become its own brand.
Quite simply, success itself is a barrier to innovation. After a big hit, you are economically incentivized to play it safe with future projects. There's more money riding on the development side and there's plenty of risk in releasing any game, let alone an actual gaming advancement. Plus, it's no longer just a handful of friends coding in their spare time - wasting weekends and vacation. It's the jobs of 6 other coders, a dozen office and technical support professionals, and 2 dozen artists on the line.
So while it's lamentable, I'm not surprised, nor do I particularly bedgrudge them, that success tends to cut off further innovation. But it's still a measureable and predictable effect.
Re:Minor case of burnout. (Score:2, Interesting)
One thing I tend to do if a game or book seems to be going a bit more slowly for me is to watch TV and play or read during the commercials (especially with the GBA games). Eventually if the game or book picks back up I'll stop paying attention to the TV.
On the other hand, when writing a particular program takes my interest, I simply do that. There's only so much of my time it can take up before it, too, loses my interest, but eventually it'll pick up again. If it's something I really want to do, I'll make time for it regardless of waning interest.
Finally, I'd say to do something more active like go out and get some exercise, but there's snow on the ground, so I'm not very motivated at the moment to do such a thing myself, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone else in that case.
Your preferences may be altering... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe your ideas about what is "fun" are changing. This in itself is not a
bad thing. When you were eight, you probably thought it was fun to run around
on a blacktop with eight-year-old children. At some point you may have thought
it was tremendous fun to read those lame, elementary-school joke books, such
as "101 Fun Food Jokes". Think that's fun now, do you?
The first time I ever played a 3D FPS (it was Wolfenstein 3D at the time), I
thought it was pretty cool. At this point, I've had a belly full of those
and don't care if I never see another one.
35 year old gamer speaks.... (Score:2, Interesting)
For example, lately I'm playing through Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for the Gamecube. It was one of the first games I bought when I got my Gamecube, but I didn't really start playing it until recently.
My opinion is this: If you are too busy to watch TV, you'll probably find yourself too busy to play games.
If I ever found myself saying, "Rather than playing a game, I'll watch that new My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance show," I seriously hope somebody will shoot me....
Interest rekindled (Score:2, Interesting)
Gaming as a social activity (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Disillusionment with current crop of games (Score:3, Interesting)
Truly, valve was shown to be amazingly farsighted and astute financially in realizing how much longevity they could grant their product by supporting the mod scene - although counter-strike was massively popular prior to this extra attention.
They also raised the bar for story, immersion, and polish. But i stand by my assertion, merely my opinion, that counter-strike and natural selection are more innovative as games than the engine that birthed them.
They introduced play modes/styles that hadn't been done before. Valve's advancement with half-life was akin to Bungie's advancement with Halo - they simply put together a great complete package, within the tried-and-true gameplay constraints of the genre.
Half-life was a watershed moment in story-driven gaming, and their attention to the fan-content community did change the industry. But it's core innovation, was an advancement in the business side of the industry. To be more concise, I believe Valve was shown to be innovative, but not through Half-life itself.
Re:I know what you mean... (Score:2, Interesting)
Mix Things Up (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Are you f'ing kidding us with this? (Score:4, Interesting)
So, some portion of the readership were not only adults, but adults seeing horrors that I hope I never have to see. However, when Congress and Dr. Frederick Wertham decided to go after comics, they treated them primarily as a passtime for teenage boys. This is because warping teenage boys is an easy charge to make, while warping hardened soldiers in Korea wouldn't stick.
Fast forward to the age of the SNES and Genesis. Video games were resurrected from the crash by Nintendo, which deliberately marketed their NES system in the United States as a toy to overcome the post crash jitters. (Remember the little robot that came out with it? That was purely as part of this marketing campaign, not because it was a good idea for a peripheral.) By the time the SNES comes along, the big games in the arcades are Street Fighter II and, cue sinister music, Mortal Kombat. (Oh, and by the time these reach the home systems, these horrible video disk games, notably Night Trap were being pushed for the Sega CD.)
Well, Congress's own Music Man, Senator Joe Lieberman, figures out a way to pull in the fretful soccermom's vote in his next re-election bid, "There's trouble, right here in River City, with a capital 'T' that rhymes with 'V' that stands for Video Games." It is in the interest of Lieberman and his ilk to portray video games as primarily children's entertainment, just as Nintendo had done to get away from the post-crash, "video games were a stupid fad," jitters to get places like Toy's R Us to carry their consoles.
So we get to today, when people forget that originally video games were in places like bars to entertain patrons and people start talking about that, "put away childish things, " nonsense. (Of course, we all know that the early Christians loved to party, especially the dour St. Paul. Remember if you are going to follow his 'childish things' advice that he's also the guy who basically believed "it is better to marry than to burn." [google.com] No wonder he gets the nickname of Captain Fun. But I suppose this nonsense makes sense in the still heavily Puritan influenced United States.)
Just my 2c (Score:2, Interesting)
Still, whenever I go on a business trip, I take a couple of good old-fashioned RPGs (think Baldur's Gate and similar) and spend a lot of time playing those in the bland boring hotel rooms.
I therefore conclude it is not the games that are at fault, but my priorities of what I like to do with my spare time have changed. That said, I recently started playing Rainbow 6 on XBox live and this game, I can't get enough of. Maybe that's because of the more social nature of the co-op game modes I like to play, maybe it's just the novelty (at least for me) of being able to talk to people in multiplayer games.
Re:I know what you mean... (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides I don't think playing video games is wasting your time. You are using your mind in new and creative ways, that can't be a complete waste. There are people that go to extremes and neglect other important parts of their life, but that goes with anything. I know people who have done that with cars, work, food, drugs, etc. As long as you keep a balance in your life it should be a positive thing.
Our Days Games are boring or stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Civilization II/III, War Lords II/III, War Craft II/III, Descent I/II, Sim City I/II and endless unknown low sales games. Ah yes and Settlers II/III/IV.
Point is: Civilization III was "just the same" like Civilization II. No real improvement. On 100 times the hardware power (Pentium III/1400) CivIII was as slow as Civ II on my old Pentium 1/180MHz.
War Craf III was a complete disappointment. Incredible dumb AI. Boring (IMHO) story, and the new game concept of story/quest IMHO badly adapted. See SpellFore, quite the same game, but 10 times better. 5 times faster building of constructions
RTS games have not improved besides using 3D engines now. No real new kick except more graphics, more sound, more lightening. Even the 3D characters, the heroes and power units in WC II are so poor designed, rendered. Unbelieveable. I have a super 3D graphics card and a charcter traveling over the screen barely has more than 4 "positions". If you count the waving cape, you have 4 for the characer and 3 for the cape.
Same for Descent 3. Descent 2 was a quite good game. On modern hardware you realized the bugs caused by network latency and "drifting" world images of the different simulation on the playing hosts. But it was really great fun and we play it still today.
But D III? Only everythign was FASTER, BRIGHTER, and with more POWER. It makes no sense to shift from a game version 2 to 3 and the main difference is the increase speed of crafts and incresed damage of weapons. E.G: D II you could play wit keyboard only, no need ofr a joy stick if you where good at it. D 3 was impossible to pay with keyboard because you could not configure the autorepeat and delay and acceleration speed of keyboard commands good enough.
Then came games like Halo. Just an example: the cross hair is as big as my thumb, the hit zone as well. What sense is it to have a 3D first person shooter and the player only needs to run around, avoid getting hit, collect amo and continioulsy keep the mouse button(aka fire button) pressed down?
Bottom line: I still enjoy playing 12 hours at my PC a computer game. But well
Since two weeks I play SpellForce. It has disadvantages en mass. Stupid 3D engine whre a standard old day 2D isometric view would be enough. When I have a full fledged army my screen makes only 4 to 5 frames per second. But: the game is GREAT! A lot of the game is so old habited
Conclusion: modern computer games are only "movies" adapted to the computer with a limited possibility of interaction.
The poster is right: meanwhile I rather code my own game than spending endless hours wasting my energy in playing stupid designed incredible expensive games not even running properly fast on my just one year old PC.
Sig
angel'o'sphere
I can no longer compete with the kids (Score:2, Interesting)
MMORPGS take up too much time to be competitive, I cannot hang with people with no jobs or go to college, since the nature of the MMORPG is Time = Equipment + Gold + Abilities. Whomever has the best equipment due to the most gold usually wins.
FPS's the winners are the ones with the high frame rate, low ping times, twitchy reflexes, and macros. Kids can out aim, jump, and shoot me now.
Single Player RPG's - I sit there, and play, and think, I'm sitting here trying to figure out a puzzle, or to click the buttons in the sequence that the developers tell me to, or allude to. *Not Fun*
So, I'm left with open ended games like GTA Vice City, and single player sports games. Madden, etc.
Both of which I find amusing and relatively fun to play. But neither of which are very satisfying, because, once again, you're beating a computer. There's no "HA HA" factor in playing by yourself.
So, for me, my interest in games is dying because I can no longer compete. The competition is what was fun for me.