Too old for games. Just me?
polycounter lvl 18
Pretty much since leaving my teen years behind, I've been playing fewer and fewer video games. At first, that seemed like a rage-worthy decline in quality on the part of the games, but while I'm not discounting that possibility, it has also become quite clear that I feel I'm just getting too old to still be playing games. And that's not just the explicitly juvenile ones, but every single one. I'm just not that interested anymore, and I'd rather read a book.
That's fine, really. Tastes change. But is anyone feeling the same way? Does anyone else feel too old to play video games?
And if so, is it a responsible thing to tell people to go into any sort of game education or career when there's a chance it's just a thing you like in your youth?
That's fine, really. Tastes change. But is anyone feeling the same way? Does anyone else feel too old to play video games?
And if so, is it a responsible thing to tell people to go into any sort of game education or career when there's a chance it's just a thing you like in your youth?
Replies
I also think it's because there's a wave of terrible games coming out. Not as much fun anymore, and that require less thinking too. The challenges are way too low and I don't feel the element fun on them.
I guess that growing up means you have way less free time, so gotta be more selective with what you spend it with. I only play REALLY good games, got no time for the average ones!
I feel similar, caring less about playing games these days. However, I think it is because that we have the technology to move forward with video game technology, yet refuse to do so because it is a risk and is not easy money.
I am not talking about just graphics, either. I am talking about how we interact with the game worlds. We've basically used the same controllers that the first console had, but with more buttons, pressure sensitivity added to those buttons, and mini-joysticks for aiming and movement.
People say that things like the Wii-mote and the Playstation Move are just gimmicks. I don't agree with that at all - I'd say that developers just see them as risks as they are not established methods for interacting with game worlds.
That, and such unique input devices need to come with the consoles instead of being expensive add-ons that end up being the price of the consoles themselves. That's one of the reasons why it makes sense that the Wii was such a hit - people were willing to tolerate lower graphics while using more interesting input methods.
With things such as the Occulus Rift and 360 degree treadmills, games could be vastly more interesting and immersive than they are right now. We have the technology, but it has yet to come together. John Carmack has the right idea with endorsing the Occulus Rift and has already created a Doom III version for it. Hawken also supports the Occulus Rift right now.
also, many of the games that get released just dont interest me.
when i play games then only multiplayer with friends
I kind of gave up on newer games awhile ago since they tend to focus a lot on narrative and it's just too difficult for me to keep straight what is going on with only a few hours here and there to put in. It's like trying to watch a movie in 10 minute segments over the course of a month. I do still keep up on art trends/tech and watch Let's Plays and things.
I still remember the good ol' days of Golden Axe, Quackshot and Altered Beast on the Megadrive to name a few, good times!
EDIT: Having said that, one game I did get hooked on recently was Dark Souls, feckin awesome if you can get past the barrier of teeth-gritting and swearing.
Conversely, Steam Workshop, Elder Scrolls games, UDK.
Instead of Quake and Unreal mods, and mods for Quake and Unreal games, you have UDK and CryEngine available without requiring the purchase of any game.
And then you have a handful of games that have monetized modding (like TF2/Dota2) which is really just an evolution of the old "make mods, get a job" pipeline, allowing you to "make mods as a job" instead.
I really hate seeing people bitch that the golden age of modding has disappeared because in its wake we've seen a legitimate golden age of indie games and indie scene grow up in its place. There isn't much point in making an Unreal mod that requires you to own Unreal and can't be sold for money, when you can instead make a UDK game and sell it if you'd rather.
It's like bitching that the golden age of carriage building vanished because now we have cars.
On that note I'll be on Planetside this weekend and will be having a blast.
This unfortunately limits to huge "total conversion" efforts, which not everyone has the scope to shoot for. Modding wasn't always about that.
I guess the other fact is due to a change of taste when we grow older. I heard from someone once that our taste in food and drinks changed and refined somewhere in our late 20's. I guess that kind of extended to our taste in games as well.
Well for me, that also counts my factor on the time I've spent less in games, where I'm quite picky with my games, to the point my AAA games library were bare these days. Indie games are starting to grow in my library, though.
It's mostly due to time, I just don't have the time to get absorbed in games anymore. Go to work, come home, try to do more work on the art side of things, wife, etc. Growing up, games were "me", they were who I was or where I could be or what have you when I wasn't at school. I played and loved games for the same reasons I read a lot of novels. I don't read many books these days, for the same reasons I spend less time playing games.
Even if I do have the time, I have difficulty enjoying them if I feel something else better deserves my attention. Given the number of things that applies to, it's no wonder there are so many games in my Steam library that haven't gotten any attention as of yet.
It's still a very weird thing to go weeks at a time without playing games, but I'd rather work too much than game too much. I'm also not too bummed, because I always get games for a lot cheaper - buying them months or years after they're released.
Stuff like Skyrim still sort of interests me but after playing a bit of it, it's really just morrowind, done very very well. Don't get me wrong, I think these games NEED to be made, for younger audiences to experience these kinds of gameplay for sure. Also because they ARE exploring new ideas as well, it's just that... i played Morrowind, I played Oblivion, I guess i'm just getting bored with it.
I'm of the opinion currently that there is a huuge segment of older gamers that are not being catered to. They're still buying and playing all the big games because they almost feel obligated to, but their looking for something else. I'm not entirely sure what this segment is looking for, as i myself am not totally sure, or if there even is a "segment".
I get most excited about small indie games and mid size digital downloads, The Walking Dead's, Journeys, etc. I think this is the space where real innovation is happening.
The problem with the indie scene and smaller games is they really aren't spoon fed to you. In some cases you really have to keep your ear to the ground and search for these games, which takes time and effort. Luckily some of my co-workers are really into talking about smaller games(and bigger), and referencing me to them.
In short i agree with you Zwebbie, im not playing as many games, and im not completely sure it's because of the quality of games coming out. I think there are games out there that I would like, im just really not sure what im looking for.
side note, online multilayer is really starting to ruin gaming for me as well. I'm really starting to lose faith in the common decency of people with most of the horrible shit I see people saying and doing to other people, team stacking, base raping. Also the shitty problem of trying to have any fun playing a game you only have time to play maybe once every two weeks against people playing it every day, it seems like ranking systems are like a must have for any online game, although maybe i just suck.
rant over, i guess
I have to go to work and work on my folio, so that takes up more time. Thus taking away time to play a game and sometimes I feel that I would rather make some art than play but I know I will never out grow games.
I do find my self buying older game and playing them more, but I think that is just me going back in time and buying the game I never could afford when I was younger.
Either way gaming will always be apart of my life. I may not be able to play as much as I used to, but i'll be damned sure to try.(It helps to have a significant other who games so they wont complain about it! haha)
I dont think it's a maturity thing. I think this could happen to anyone at any age. I think it's more an experience thing. The longer you play games for the more obvious the lack of innovation is.
I think generally i play less games not because i'm more "mature" but because i feel like i've gotten everything i can out of most high-profile genres. Kids just getting into games tolerate stuff like "black ops 2" cause they havent been playing that same crap for 10+ years already.
And just for good measure, a CS lewis quote
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
Same here. Play with friends or GTFO in my opinion.
More seriously : for me it's about having very high levels of expectation. If a game throws an annoying, unskippable cutscene or tutorial at me, I usually don't even bother with it and give it a pass because the annoyances I see in the first few minutes are likely going to be all over the experience. This trims out a LOT of recent games, since they tend to suffer from such design problems more and more because of their rising superficial complexity.
Even badly made menus (and basically any little annoyance causing things to take longer than they should) are a deal breaker to me. Because of this I game less than, say, in the PS2 days, but it's mostly because I am a very hard critic ( and I always think of any lengthy occupation in terms of wasted time that could have been spent doing something more productive, which makes me cut out even more games
I honestly find games boring. I used to have a lot of fun in Zelda, Battlefield, sometimes WoW, but it's so hard for me to get into games now. It's not because I don't have time, they just seem boring to me.
Having said that, I do love videogame artwork, and the only times I download steam sales it's for the game art. How sad is that.
Maybe it's because we know how they are made. We know everything that happens backstage, so games sort of lose their magic. I know that one of my game art teachers worked on Avatar but had zero interest in seeing it.
I miss being a kid...I'd do anything to get addicted to a game again...I miss the feeling of thinking about a game all day at school and finally coming home and playing it.
agreed. those times were great. this rarely happens nowadays. Skyrim was the last game that did that for me.
As for the OP: one thing I just cannot do is talk about games with other people. I still like playing games but I find talking about games usually incredibly boring, unless we're covering a specific artistic feature or a specific technical implementation. And then I'm more interested in how it's done and how to re-create it. IF you really want to make me run away you start talking about skill points, skill combos, your favorite raid or whateverthecrap.
Otherwise, I really prefer other topics when meeting other people. Music, books, movies, art, food, traveling - anything but games.
I dont have the time to spend on so so titles anymore, one big surprise for me was sleeping dogs which a buddy got me for xmas, I thought it was amazing and one of the most under rated games of 2012 for me.
I mostly play for the art, and that's really always been the case.
Which is good. I'm glad I'm not the sort who can spend hours on end gaming.
haha, definitely
I've playing skyrim again cuz i bought the 1st dlc on xmas. I've been playing a lot AC3, Diablo 3, Guild Wars 2, and now i'm playing Tera with my collector's edition add-ons. All those without counting the others i finished already. I also bought the CE of the expansion for Starcraft 2, so another game i will re-play surely!
When i play i just don't play to see the art, i play just for fun, or simplily to disconnect or lose time haha. For example, skyrim absorbs me a lot, and it's like i were into another world, that's fantastic.
Warframe, age of empires online, torchlight 2 and orcs must die 2 are other games i have played recently.
I still have games as one of my favorite interests, and due to that my steam/origin/ubi account is FULL of games lol.
And of course, like all of us, i find too many games boring, like rage...
I play single player games when I have the time too. I like Portal, Alan Wake and FEAR franchises a lot. Singularity was very cool too. When a game makes me care about the story or the characters, that's really something I enjoy. I am playing Darkness 2 right now and I love it so far. I'll complete Limbo sometime soon too.
Oh, I'm 27 BTW
I can quickly reference certain levels of most recent games, look how they did things and try to figure out why and how they succeeded in making it. It's perfect for work when you're trying stuff out, I even have my fraps folder connected to my dropbox allowing me to easily take screenshots of loads of environments.
I still play them for fun ofcourse, it's relaxing to me. I never watch TV or anything like that and as soon as I have a free moment you'll find me sitting there in the dark playing video-games.
Entertainment, research & work intertwined. It's lovely isn't it
Playing a video game is immersing urself in an interactive digital fantasy. Telling urself the 'story' becomes more complex as we grow older because our own story is more complex. As children, we would believe anything
I think it's a trait. "Maturing" is integral in life and keeping that childish spirit isn't easy... to find joy and amazement in the simple stuff (aka boring games)
I watch movies, series, animes, etc.... and especially with animes, i noticed characters can be very complex, have intresting story behind them, they get intresting story and character twists as the story progresses, they have interesting interaction with each other ....and when i them move to games...not always, but in many cases, characters in games just feels very..hm, fake, or how to put it, compared to those.
And lately, this just feels even more important, so i kinda loose interest in game for that reason.
I would say Mass effect did a little better then most games, that's why i liked that trilogy. But in any case, i think lately, i just expect a little more from games, and they feel like some some areas, they didn' really progress. But as i said, there are exceptions, so it's not all so bad.
When i was younger for example, i was totally ok with a main guy being just a good guy, battleing vs evil guy, who is evil just for the sake of it.
Nowdays, i like to see that there is reason why the "evil" guy acts evil, and what is this reason, maybe he's even good but due to certain events, he was forced to act evil and so...
I always likened it to "knowing a bit too much about how the sausage is made", you know?
I just turned 30 and it's still a constant battle to balance life, art and games. I couldn't imagine it any other way. The only thing that's changed is that I've had to discipline myself to not fall into multi-day gaming binges like I used to do in highschool and college, simply because I can't afford to devote that kind of time to it.
The most valuable lesson I've learned is that there is no 'free-time' as an artist, so you have to balance indulgence with work very carefully. But, along with my love of creating, my love of games is what fuels and inspires me. Without it I think burnout would be right around the corner.
I will honestly say that if you think 'games these day' suck and are unimaginative, you're simply not looking hard enough. There is SO much out there, and even games with mediocre ratings often have some really good content.
edit: I will say, my tolerance for bad writing has really gone down however...but I think that's because it's barely progressed at all, while graphics and gameplay have made leaps and bounds. I think it's just taking a long time for the right people with the right skills to see games as a legitimate medium, but I'm hoping we'll see that change in the coming decade. It's already headed that here and there.
I used to be a huge MMO freak but now I dont have the time and internet connection for them. Also lifestyle has a huge impact, doing raids and stuff was practically all I lived for at one point but now finding the time to play a few straight hours is nigh on impossible. If I play anything these days its usually something I can stop and start without having much of an impact on other players.
But I also think as we get older we move out of the target market for commercial titles. Its kinda like that with movies too.
haha well said.
I think most are referring to games that are getting a lot of popularity and hitting the shelves but not really living up to high expectations (which is fair enough, you shell out £40-50 for a title - you want it to be awesome.)
I think there's a lot of people trying out new stuff with the indie dev scene though and its great to see it doing so well, so I wouldn't say I've given up hope
(There are some great titles out there though, been playing Darksiders 2 lately and its crazy good :thumbup: )
There's a ton of fantastic games coming out every year, but with age comes more responsibilities and more things that have to be done in the same time, work often takes much time as well.
I personally want to play more again, but I tend to be more selective nowdays, or create a huge backlog.
that isn't going to happening playing games.
I can say that only games I've genuinely been intrested in playing these past years have been portal 2, journey, skyrim and deadspace 2 and deadspace 2 is just there because I'm a horror buff and like the scifi horror genre.
I feel the games that are made today have a very different target audience than me. I sort of get insulted by beeing constantly being bombarded by tips and tutorials, the simplistic story and bland characters. Very few things are left for me to figure and solve on my own. The instant gratification that many AAA titles sport today just isn't for me.
I think the reason 3 of the 4 games I listed up there have a silent protagonist is because I find it easier to project myself onto that character and enjoy the game than when I'm given a 25-30 something guy who's running around spewing curses and jokes and generally feeling like a bro.
we're getting less playtime, with lower replay value, at a much higher cost. i don't want to spend what's being asked on games now, because i constantly feel like i'm being ripped off. and more often than not, it's a huge gamble!
£60 is almost a weeks worth of food for me and my family, and yet i'm being asked to gamble that money on a game which i may/may not enjoy for ~8 hours. in fact, i could even take my kids to france for the day, stay a night, and come back the next day for that amount... it really comes to something when a game costs as much or more than a cheap holiday.
yes, i said ~8 hours.
that's how long it took me to finish darksiders 2.
that's how long it took me to finish the single player of farcry 3 with all bounty boards and towers done.
that's how long it took me to get to inferno mode of diablo 3.
that's now long it took me to finish metal gear solid 4 (not including all the cutscenes).
even in mmo's, i've found i hit max level within a couple of days of launch... to be more accurate actually, within the headstart period.
and why is that? because games are EASY. they've gotten progressively EASIER. there's no more "you died? sucks man, start over from the beginning please". no more hidden pitfalls or points of no return... remember the kings quest games? i can't even count how many times i had to save, move forward, save again, do it wrong, dig up an earlier save that i could go to so as to avoid a later mistake etc.
that kind of thing just doesn't exist anymore. it's been replaced with rail-gaming... progression on a set path with pretty much the minimum of human interaction. gaming now can be pretty much summed up with the phrase "turn your console on, and turn your brain off".
i'm glad i've chosen to do the art side of gaming, because the designing side must be horrible.
There are games and there are franchises. Dead Space, Metro 2033, F.E.A.R, Crysis, Max Payne, Ghost Recon AW and Splinter Cell just to name a few were bloody good games with hours of fun and frolics back when they were games
The passion is gone when it comes to new releases, it's all money and profit orientated now days and we can see this across the board. Who knows there are a few releases that I am looking forward to but I wont be holding my breath !!!!
every single one of the games you listed is a glorified rail shooter.
I do not care for shooters on rails at all, it just feels like a poorly written movie where you get to fire your wep once in a while.
Recently i got an account for http://www.gog.com/ and i can honestly say im having tons of fun all over again, feels just like when i was a kid and these games all work flawlessly on my system, no dodgy emulators needed. So give this a shot if you're feeling nostalgic!