I am not QUITE at this person's point yet, as I am currently 29. But I am struggling to find a game I enjoy lately.
I would argue that games have not stayed the same. Video games have become aggressively monetized at the expense of the consumer. Companies are now looking to exploit a small percentage of core users, "whales", hoping to get them to spend hundreds of dollars on microtransactions.
There is also a focus on "live services". Basically releasing the game as a poorly constructed product, and then slowly updating it over years and years while charging for the updates along the way. Look at the most played games right now, and you will notice very few of them are from 2018, but rather are older games that have been continually updated.
Some examples:
1. The other day I logged back into my Destiny 2 account after lapsing over the holiday seasons, and to my dismay I discover that I am now expected to pay an additional $20 on top of the $80 I have already paid total for the game.
2. So, I decide to log into a game that had launched around a year ago but was not in a state I considered acceptable, Battletech. I figured more time in the oven would make it better. BOOM. $20 season pass, otherwise I am locked out of new parts of the game.
3. So I switch over to Call of Duty Black Ops: 4, a game I had not played in a few months but thought was fun enough when I started playing. In the time between they added gameplay affecting micro-transactions AND a $20 "expansion pack" that consisted of a few levels.
4. Last year's Star Wars BattleFront 2 was LAMBASTED due to being a full-priced $60 product which monetized all progression with an absurdly expensive loot-box scheme. After people did the math they realized it could cost hundreds of dollars to acquire some of the characters in the game, and that the drops from the loot boxes heavily influenced gameplay.
Video games have become excessively monetized. Companies have realized they can make more money by making the same games over and over again. Gone is the risky, interesting "AA" games of the last generation. Now the only games are being made are extremely expensive to produce and obnoxiously monetized "AAA" games. Now that these companies have gotten a taste of the loot-box whale money, they do not want to go without it.
Take a look at the work done by Jim Sterling for a more detailed analysis.
edit, adding more thoughts:
Another thing is that they are all the same games. Low TTK shooters turned into team shooters transformed into Battle Royale games.
There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore. Games with interesting movement mechanics. It is all low TTK tactical shooters. Low TTK is an equalizer between low-skill and high-skill players. Even a very bad player can get a point if they sneak up on a good player.
The thing is, the mobile game industry is RAKING IN CASH and the AAA game industry wants a piece of that action. It is becoming hard to justify creating Call of Duty 5 if you can make a lame gatcha mobile game and make more money. Investors want that mobile game money so the big game companies are getting desperate chasing that dragon.
I'm in a similar boat (a year or two further down the road). I haven't got a new big game in years. In response to the GPU shortage a year ago, I've started playing through my Steam backlog. It's almost entirely games from the Humble Bundles over the years, mostly older games and indies over the past 15 years that don't have said business models.
Side note: I've recently played Battlefront 2. The old one.
I used to hate free to play. But I reolized my nieces and nephews just download a game, play for free, and move on when things slow down. Enough content exists that you can just skip the DLC’s. Occasionally if you really like a game it’s nice for more content to be out there.
Me and my buddy have this same issue -- as we only get to play infrequently as we are busy. "Oh this one requires an expansion." "Oh this one needs a 30 gb update."
Eventually we just say fuck it and go back to counterstrike :)
>There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore.
Well, there's Quake Champions, but they're really struggling. They tried taking Quake and incorporating a lot of the features from more modern games (micro transactions, loot boxes, character classes like Overwatch) and ended up with a hot mess.
Quake Champions is fun but I would really like a more modern take.
I felt it was a re-tread rather than an evolution.
Lawbreakers was a pretty good game with interesting movement mechanics, but I feel that it suffered from trying to be too pretty and mediocre level design.
Sorry to focus on a single point from a longer post, but...
> There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore. Games with interesting movement mechanics.
Both Paladins and Overwatch have characters with interesting movement, to the point where almost every Overwatch character has a movement ability. Both are following in the footsteps of TF2 movement. In contrast, the funky movement mechanics in Quake weren't always explicitly designed and were often much more difficult to execute properly - that's fine in a symmetric game but causes balance issues in anything asymmetric.
Fortnite and CoD have both added a grappling hook, and Fortnite in particular seems to be experimenting quite a bit with movement via jump pads, planes, trolleys, bouncey-shardy-things (you can tell I don't play it...). The latest Spiderman game has seen universal praise for the swinging movement. My personal favorite game of 2018 was Wizard of Legend, which has a no-cooldown dash ability - something that would normally break balance.
Anyway, I think I'm just trying to say there's a ton of experimentation with movement mechanics in modern games.
I was gold rank in Overwatch and I just did not end up enjoying the game. There is a lot to love in the game, but I stand by what I said.
Compare Overwatch and Paladins to Quake or Tribes and the differences are stark.
The movement mechanics in Overwatch are less interesting TO ME than what we had in the past.
> Both Paladins and Overwatch have characters with interesting movement, to the point where almost every Overwatch character has a movement ability.
A movement ability like "Jump high and then walk very slowly" or "Boost jump and then glide with pack" are not particularly interesting to me. Nor are they experimental They had been done many times before. The entire game is basically a reworked TF2.
In Quake, everyone had access to the rocket jump and plasma climb. Everyone could strafe jump and move at absurd speeds ALL THE TIME and it made the game CRAZY FAST and fun. Other than Quake live, I cannot think of a modern competitive game that does this.
In Overwatch, you are still mostly walking around at a snails pace waiting for your ult to charge.
> Both are following in the footsteps of TF2 movement.
I would argue that TF2 walked in the footsteps of TFC, which was literally spawned from the Quake mod Team Fortress, which utilized the weapon and movement mechanics of Quake in a class based system.
Really, when you get down to it, many of the weapons and abilities in Overwatch can trace their lineage to Quake.
Off the top of my head: Junkrat has the grenade launcher, Pharah has the classic rocket launcher, Sombra has the teleporter, widow has the rail gun, Torbjorn has the shotgun, Bastion has the machine gun, Winston has the chain gun, Symmetra has the lightning gun.
> In contrast, the funky movement mechanics in Quake weren't always explicitly designed
This is a misconception. They discovered strafe jumping in Quake 1 and then ported it to the sequels because it was FUN and people liked it. I agree they were more difficult to execute, but if you play the game you get then hang of it very quickly: The difficulty is greatly exaggerated.
> and were often much more difficult to execute properly - that's fine in a symmetric game but causes balance issues in anything asymmetric.
This is totally fair, and I agree that they are different games. I just prefer the old-style Quake games to the new hero shooters. And you cannot deny there have been a LOT of them haha
Additionally, these movement mechanics were fun ON THEIR OWN! I still enjoy hoping into a Quake Live race server from time to time to see how fast I can go.
> Fortnite and CoD have both added a grappling hook, and Fortnite in particular seems to be experimenting quite a bit with movement via jump pads, planes, trolleys, bouncey-shardy-things (you can tell I don't play it...). The latest Spiderman game has seen universal praise for the swinging movement.
Fortnite and CoD have the occasional opportunity to utilize different movement mechanics. This is very different from the deeply integrated movement mechanics of Quake and Tribes.
Additionally, they are EXACTLY the battle royale and fast TTK realistic shooters I called out elsewhere in my comment.
> My personal favorite game of 2018 was Wizard of Legend, which has a no-cooldown dash ability - something that would normally break balance.
WoL is a teeny little indie game. Great game, but far outside of mainstream gaming.
I can identify with playing games less as I age, and I agree with a lot of what they are saying. When I was in high school, A lot of my hobbies/social activity were built into schooling, so at the end of the day, I had time to come home and play.
As an adult, I have social circles both within and outside of my job, a relationship (though she likes playing video games too), I have new hobbies, and hobbies that I can't do at work. I also have time and money to be able to go out and do new things that I couldn't do when I was younger.
As a result, when I do play, usually it is in 30 to 45 minute spurts, usually the weekend. Even then, it is usually a social thing. My siblings and I have Switches, and we have been bonding over playing online with each other (we don't live near each other), or I will play with my significant other.
The competitive one is an interesting thing. I have never been a competitive person, but I think the competitiveness drops off because off bad experiences. I completely stopped playing Magic the Gathering because of dealing with toxic players, and I played online with strangers for exactly one session, and that was soured by toxic gamers. I imagine a lot of others have had similar experiences, and that sours that sort of competition for the majority of people.
EDIT: I forgot to add, being on a computer for 8 hours a day at work also really kills my desire to stare at another screen for even more time.
I can concur with the lack of patience for dealing with other players. I spent entirely too much time with counterstrike, but having a prepubescent kid call me a noob because my skills have atrophied is the last thing i want to do in my spare time.
I've actually gravitated towards single-player, mainly due to time constraints. That is one of the reasons I still love FTL, I can actually do an entire playthrough in one sitting. And the only multi-player game I play is Elite Dangerous, which is boredom personified (and I haven't seen another player in game in over 9 months).
I don't agree with the doom and gloom tone of the article, however. In my experience, there has never been a better time to be a gamer with non-mainstream tastes. Especially if you are on PC, the indie market and kickstarter have revived things like CRPGS.
I agree %100 with the indie market. I think the two most played games on my Switch are Overcooked 1/2 and Stardew Valley. Overcooked 2 has been awesome in that my siblings, our significant others, and I can get on a phone chat then play it as if we are on the couch together. We have been carving out a night a week so we can do it, and it has been a great experience.
Sadly, we wanted to do that with Super Mario Party and Super Smash Bros (we played those games extensively as kids), and both of those games online mode are hampered to the point that we tried playing it once, then going back to Overcooked.
I genuinely like how they implemented loot boxes in Overwatch. It ONLY gives cosmetic items and delivers enough currency that feels like it rewards you for playing.
Yeah it stands in stark contrast to the pay-to-win model a lot of games are incorporating nowadays. I also really love how all the new updates/maps/characters have been completely free.
If this article resonates with you, here are some games I'd recommend you try. They are all indie puzzle games, they can all be easily picked up and put down in a moment, and they're all fairly cross platform.
Factorio was great at first, but at some point it felt like work. I'm a systems engineer, and I begun asking myself why I'm doing this, when it's basically what I do all day long.
Spelunky <3
That game took so much of my time, and the soundtrack brings back happy memories of watching my baby sister while dying to snakes over and over and over again.
There's a statistical issue with the study he quotes, I didn't dig deep enough to find a conclusion:
Is the study longitudinal, ie does it follow gamers as they get older?
You want to do that, because you don't want to confuse the issue of what cohort the gamer belongs to. You want to differentiate between "people like games less as they age" and "people who were born in 1980 like games less than people born in 1990".
In my own experience, once you have kids, that's it. You can't invest in any game that takes time to learn. Before kids, you could have a 2nd job healing or tanking for 3-8 hours every evening after your real life job. Or working on your shooting skills. Or watching RTS videos.
Now I can do casual gaming, which works when you're commuting, but it's not nearly the same commitment.
I would also like to see more about the effects of generation/cohort on this issue. We took our Vive and our Switch to my parents' for the holidays, and my nearly 70-year-old parents really enjoyed them. They both really got into Beat Saber, while my dad picked up Mario Kart and Smash really fast, and my mom is diving into Divinity: Original Sin 2 (and has been playing Bejeweled and Chuchel on her own).
They were born in the early 50s, long before computers and consoles were anything like mainstream. They watched us game as kids, but it wasn't until very recently that either of them has actually tried playing much. They're both responding to games like teenagers, but that's anecdotes, not data.
I'd love to know if it's an issue of age alone, age+responsibilities (i.e., do 30- to 40-year-olds who don't have kids or other time-consuming responsibilities shift their preferences the same way equivalent-aged parents do?), or age of their gaming career (i.e., do people who pick up gaming in their middle years or later start with the same interests as young gamers and gradually age out of them with time, or do they start with the interests of "old" gamers?).
I really don't care about keeping up anymore. I'm just playing the games I enjoy. Lately, it's been Dragon Quest XI, Phoenix Wright Spirit of Justice, Metroid Samus Returns, and 20xx.
I'm almost 40, and haven't really played video games since college. No time, no interest..and I'm not really that great at video games anyway.
For christmas, I bought my kids a Switch, and I've definitely been playing it way more than them. Just finished Mario Odyssey, and it was a lot of fun, and I think I may be addicted. Getting the new Zelda later today...
I think my brain just needed the right game and some time off. 20 years did the trick.
I think the article is right about how our relationship with games changes because our relationship with time changed. When you're younger, time is a seemingly infinite resource and money very much isn't. So a game that can occupy your time, either with the need to practice or even just tedium (looking at you, JRPGs) is more interesting and valuable. When you're older time is scarce, but money on the scale of game prices really isn't. You have a low tolerance for spending time on things that aren't enjoyable like grinding character levels or honing shooter skills.
Nintendo puts a lot of effort into making gaming a more locally social, and especially family-oriented, form of entertainment. And even for some single-player franchises like Mario and Zelda they are adept at creating whimsically enjoyable experiences, so their games often transcend age boundaries. But games like Pokemon, with its grinding and random battles, doesn't.
I've found that as I've gotten older (only 26, mind you), I've turned to more single-player games. In fact, the only multiplayer games I play regularly are Path of Exile, Smash (and I play mostly solo mode, or against friends locally) and Splatoon (which is the only shooter I like). While I don't mind grinding for levels to beat a boss and such, I don't want to have to grind my technical skills at the game just to have fun. And, since that's all a lot of online games are, it gets extremely frustrating and tiresome really quickly. Plus, I've found that a lot of single player games are also less likely to try to tempt you into buying stuff -- like hell am I going to buy anything (DLC excluded, of course) when I'm already paying $60 for the base game! And, becuase of that, I think they don't try as hard to make them super addictive, since they're not counting on many sells from that aspect of them; sadly, I've also found enjoyable single player games getting less and less common...
Same here for me and my wife. We only haven't bought the PS4 Pro because we can't find enough place to put the couch but we're working on that.
Many modern PC games imitate the mobile games monetization model and are increasingly hostile to any semblance of long-lasting community. Throw in the mix the clueless multiplayer implementations of many games where people are as toxic as it can get and it's easily understandable why so many people leave those games when the novelty wears off.
We're gonna transition fully to console [and partially to PC] single player games with good stories and graphics (Lara Croft, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War come to mind) -- as soon as we handle our logistics problem.
>Despite a wider variety than ever before, video games don’t have the same effect on me as they used to.
I must have hit the jackpot then, because in my 40s, games absolutely feel to me now like they used to. They continue to excite me and some of them even still take over all my free time for a while, pushing out all my other hobbies and what little social life I have.
Do all of them? Nope, but they didn't all hit me like that back in my teens, either. Some of them are just astounding, though, and after playing one of those games I actually get a little sad that no other game is there to take me up to that same level of fun.
The most recent game for me like that was Ni No Kuno 2, which turned out to be a lot better than I expected. (I hated the combat in NNK 1 and didn't complete it, and wasn't expecting much from NNK 2.) So glad to be proven wrong there.
Other games like Uru, Fallout New Vegas, and The Witness have done the same in the past, and there's usually at least 1 each year that does it for me, if not more.
Many of the games that don't hit that level of obsession still are a ton of fun, too.
I sort of fit the mould described, so does my partner, but I think there's more to it. We're in our 50s, and started with Defender and Tempest, even Space Invaders in the arcades. :) Yes, I've definitely lost interest in MMOs, any social gaming, and 95% of anything that is on consoles or counts as an AAA title.
I think that's as much because most of those games contain tons of what I'd call cynical time and money sinks. Loot boxes, RNG designed to keep you playing "enough" so force you to farm. Building weapons and armour, delays or maps, even the whole gameplay around those $$ related additions. I don't like open world games that are so tightly on rails it's almost like playing an old laserdisc game like Dragon's Lair. The first couple of Call of Duty games were very much this. So dull.
We mostly play indie titles and can spend as much time as we ever did. We spend time because it's fun. If it's designed to take time, I'll try something else. Sometimes, they'll take far more hours than the alleged AAA titles. Factorio, Shenzen or some of the recent (and very welcome) resurrection of turn based RPGs like Divinity and Pillars of Eternity have all felt far more substantial than any major titles.
Of the majors I can think of Civ and Skyrim, and if Paradox count as a major Europa Universalis. That really is about it. Of the rest, I couldn't care less. I'd prefer Skyrim to be, or at least feel, more like the depth and complexity of Morrowind.
I think we both tend to play in shorter spurts - real life shows up that bit more.
How much of that is me aging, and how much the arrival of the ability to milk revenue from every game? :)
I've been playing games off and on a long time. I had pretty much lost interest in social gaming, but Fortnite came around and it was fun enough for me to keep at it. Now I have decent enough skill to at least compete with the presumably younger people that sink hours and hours daily into it. And interestingly, I find that I approach the game tactics with a bit more wisdom and circumspection than I would've as a younger man, which can be an advantage.
Now, I wholeheartedly agree on your assessment of many games being cynical time and money sinks. It's really a shame. The coolest thing to me about a video game is the world it creates. And I'd rather not my time in that world be devoted to picking up coins everywhere. BioShock Infinite, I'm looking at you. Horizon Zero Dawn, on the other hand, does have some monotony, but overall the game is so enthralling you don't even mind. We need more games like that.
I wonder if the "Aging Gamer" described is the title is really a gamer, i.e. someone passionate about videogames, or just some kind of consumerist who only keeps up with whatever is marketed towards him or her.
I play videogames, but I can't call myself a gamer. Maybe I was back when I had free time to practice fighting games, and played competitively. Maybe I was a gamer when I played a bunch of niche titles, regardless of genre. Maybe I was a gamer when I collected rare games and hardware. I'm certainly not a gamer now though.
I think about the decline of time I spend on gaming. A lot of it comes down to not having enough time (with a full time job and other interests I didn't have when I was younger), but I'll make time for the right game. I think the article jives with this, but I'm not sure if this is specific to gaming. It reminds me of a similar article I read on here a few years ago that talked about how after a certain age, people stop seeking out new music as well.
An interesting side-effect emerges. The total video game backlog stretches far back into history, with many games from the past 10 years alone still being relevant today.
As a single data point to add to the discussion, while Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is available for sale, I chose to purchase Modern Warfare 2 instead, for me, my wife, and a few friends for below the cost of a single license for the former game. The graphics and gameplay are considerably richer, in my opinion, than PUBG and Fortnite. The graphics are comparable.
This is a staggering revelation to me. To get something dramatically better in terms of visual fidelity, I would have to purchase a game like Battlefield V. But the cost is unappealing in a global market with several industries increasing prices across the board.
I'm searching for better values in a world with increasing costs, and finding that many people are still playing these older games, in part because they're not much different than new blockbusters.
Additionally, I'd rather not pay 60 USD for what has been called at times a "beta." I'm good.
You actually only have to go back a year or two to pick up AAA titles for £5 or so.
I recently picked up Batman Arkham Knight for £4 and Doom for ~£7. Both absolutely phenomenal games, graphics that rival anything out in 2018 and of course all those nasty PC port bugs totally squashed.
It also means building a PC capable of doing them justice is a little more affordable too.
Interesting, I don't play as much as I used but instead I watch a few different gamers I enjoy who play the games I used to play a lot. Mostly I don't play them as much now since I'm too slow - either my work day has drained too much out of me or literally my reflexes are not as good nor my vision.
With the brain its "use it or lose it". I was relatively good at CS:S. I was backup in a few matches for some pros. Then I took a break for 10 years. When I went back to it, I sucked all over again. With twitch-reflex games it is not at all like riding a bike.
It took me a month of 8 hours a day one summer to get marginally ok. I'm guessing it would take me a similar amount of time now (15 years out). I don't really want to take that time, though.
I stopped calling myself a gamer years ago after I found myself playing less than 2 new games a year. I realized it was like calling myself a movie buff and only watching a handful a year.
Part of it is that games no longer challenge me like they once did. I played through Breath of the Wild and of the 100 or so puzzle shrines, only a few took more than 5 seconds to figure out their gimmick. However my girlfriend played it and would routinely get stuck for multiple hours. She is smart, but did not grow up playing games like I did. Her play style reminds me of how I played through them as a child. I have just learned all the tricks, the little hints that game developers put in to guide the player. BOTW is a well designed game, but that means it uses standard patterns to teach the player, and I am more attuned to those patterns than she is.
The other side of challenge in games is just grinding skill. Like learning all the characters in Smash Brothers and how to counter them, or improving my aim in Counter Strike. At the end of the day that is a more muscle memory based skill, and I am just not interested in sinking the time into it.
Rogue likes are the closest to the challenge I’m looking for. But even those eventually reduce to memorizing all the random events and forming a plan based on possible future events.
If they just took a popular game and used the engine like skyrim, fallout, gears, halo, etc. Just pump out more of the same. Using new maps. Keep the same enemies even. I'd buy it, a lot of people would. Why are they leaving money on the table?
I am really struggling to enjoy games at the moment, the last memorable ones have been
* Arma 3 because its a sandbox and I can script my own missions etc.
* Doom reboot, purely for the nostalgia
For older games from my childhood like Half Life, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and Command and Conquer.
I might dust them out for an hour or two but the novelty goes away quickly, maybe its because of ageing graphics or I don't remember them as I used to.
Another factor is that working on a PC all day makes its less desirable for me to then come home and sit on my home PC and play games.
The reboot situation is interesting as it gives companies a chance to make money out of an old IP and the fanbase can rekindle some of their younger days playing those games.
> I might dust them out for an hour or two but the novelty goes away quickly
This has been my experience as well. Over the last few years over and over again I'll start games I've played before but within an hour or two I've lost interest in playing. I remember enough of the overall plot and mechanics that the only thing that still sticks out to me is the repetitive, grindy bits of the game (and all games have them). A few times I've turned to cheating to level characters, unlock stuff, bypass all the grind parts and just enjoy the story or game mechanics, but even then it's not as interesting as it used to be.
I'm sure I'm missing something about the business, but I've wondered why you so frequently only get a year of paid DLC for a title. They burn a lot of resources making a game, then abandon it to do it all over again. They'll repackage Skyrim a half-dozen times to sell it again, obviously people are playing it. Why aren't they pushing new DLC for these people?
As a not so old gamer (30), I do find there is a big change which is important for me and a lot of people: games are more "safe" for minorities. There's less sexism and racism. You see plenty of games about LGBT or illegal migrants struggles. There's more and more strong female characters (Kassandra in the last Assassin's Creed is so great). So it might a problem of generation.
EDIT: this is a response to the comments here, not the article.
I'm of the same generation as you, and I'm not sure I agree. If this were true, I think we'd see this in other forms of media as well. A good counterexample would be the new Doctor Who series. That show is getting utterly eviscerated by longtime fans (of our generation mostly) that hate it BECAUSE they are pushing minority based plotpoints/storylines.
Putting on my subjective cap, I personally don't like the move towards such content. Nothing to do with the actual underlying messages (Samus has and probably always will be my favorite Nintendo character, and I actually don't mind the new Doctor), but rather the hamfisted, uninspired, force fed way it is delivered these days. If I were the audience this was targeted towards, I'd be fairly pissed as they are wrapping these good messages in a package that requires zero critical thinking.
Games are still games, what do people expect? Also the cost of creating games has skyrocket but the price is the same for the last 20 years. I think most people forget that an average 35y/o has 20 years of video game experience, it's not like he's going to discover anything new.
Games are also getting worse and worse. Less hacks, mods, cheats, no free demos any more, instead we have DRM which decreases performance by 20% for paying customers, micro transactions, pay-to-win, kids screaming at us, less welcoming and tolerant players who kick you for going to bathroom during a game break, more platform locking, ads and activity tracking... Internet or service provide is down? Screw you, you can't play single-player!
Games in general are definitely not getting worse. There are more excellent indie and medium-size studio games coming out than ever. If you don't like those things you complain about, play other games.
Even the big studios are starting to learn that pay-to-win and crazy microtransactions turn people off-- the business model for Fortnite, the biggest game out there, is pretty user-friendly by providing a free game with 100% of gameplay available for $0. All purchases are cosmetic and (I believe) aren't locked in lootboxes. EA famously rolled back their microtransaction models last year after a few bad releases.
I love that studios are trying out new business models, even if some suck. Some of my favorite games (Counterstrike and Crusader Kings 2) use user-friendly "microtransactions" to continue 6+ years of development and feedback.
I'm in my early 30s now, and while I agree with some points in the article (no interest in competitive, minimal interest in twitch-reliant anything) I've still been able to find a few games a year that really capture me.
2018 - Subnautica, God of War
2017 - Horizon Zero Dawn, Prey, Sundered
2016 - Hitman 2016, Life is Strange
2015 - MGS 5, Invisible Inc
2014 - The Long Dark, Factorio
I feel like there's quite a bit of variety out there (these days more then ever), and while I've gradually dropped various genres from my list of "things I'm willing to play", there's still enough to keep it as one of my primary sources of entertainment. Roguelikes/roguelites, especially, have done well the past few years (Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, FTL, Risk of Rain, Darkest Dungeon, etc.) and provide high quality, no filler gameplay at low cost, and often in convenient time increments.
That's why many people hesitate to call themselves gamers or even admit it in certain (more conservative) social settings. Thinking back, gaming was a chill activity for me only a single-digit percent of the time and now at 38 y/o I am ashamed that I didn't admit that to myself earlier. And yes, many people still view "gamers" and teenagers with no cares at all. They haven't noticed that the world changed and these teenagers now play together with their kids. And that even company CEOs have admitted to be gaming.
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2. Games aren't increasing in diversity or quality.
Quite the contrary, even the big AAA studios drop the ball and start milking nostalgia -- recent releases like Fallout 76 and WoW's latest expansion Battle for Azeroth are a prime example. Them not being quality games is not an universal truth of course but if you visit any gaming forum outlet you'll quickly discover they are a very divisive topic. This wasn't true even as back as 2-3 years ago for many games (the above two included).
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3. I'm glad the article debunked that your abilities start to deteriorate at your 30s.
At 38 I can still pop in a random Quake3 server and absolutely dominate the others there. Many times they teamed up 5v1 against me and still lost on total score. As you get "older" (if 30s are "being old") your abilities can even self-perfect -- my wife several times noted that when I played a game for a week and quit it and then got back to it 6 months later I was suddenly extremely good at it and better than her who played it casually for those 6 months. It's as if your brain has been periodically replaying your experience with the game and gradually perfected the schemata that makes you much more efficient at the game. Probably while you slept.
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4. Aggressive monetization.
As the stable income from selling games dwindles, many businessmen imagine that they are forced to introduce microtransactions or release half-finished games and then basically make you pay for a DLC that costs as much as the original game itself for you to get the "full" game -- this isn't an undeniable fact but many feel that way about a lot of EA / Ubisoft games.
Whatever the reason, microtransactions are killing the desire of many to play. We the humans get emotionally invested in everything we do. The fact that the businesses want to prey on the sunk cost fallacy, or nostalgia, or bait-and-switch tactics, is something that even people at 20 years old now reliably detect and try to stay away from.
The customers are getting smarter and the business makes less and less effort to market / advertise their games in an appealing way. Cleavage shots or shiny costumes and mounts don't seem to be cutting it anymore -- or at least not so well as the businesses would like.
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5. Our priorities change, yes.
I ain't gonna bore anyone with sob stories but I had a pretty awful life and learned helplessness is something I have to fight my every waking second (people keep telling me I do an awesome job and I honestly can't believe it and that's not a fake modesty, I really can't; many other examples abound). At certain point you just sit down and start thinking what you are doing with your life -- and time, and energy. That the popular breeds of gaming lost most of its appeal is indeed a gradual process as the article assesses it to be.
And I indeed don't care about competition, like at all. Nobody can tempt me with "you're just afraid I am gonna beat you". I just shrug and say "you're a champion, are we done with this discussion?".
Me and my wife recently chatted at length about our diminished pleasure in games and concluded that we are gonna buy a PS4 Pro and a very comfy couch and probably won't touch a multiplayer game more than a few times a year. It's just how it is. She ...
I have fond memories of playing Final Fantasy II as a kid. I downloaded Octopath Traveller on the Switch and couldn't get through the introduction I was so bored. Going back and playing Final Fantasy on the NES Classic, I can't believe I used to have so much time on my hands and so much patience to play this stuff.
Ahh, yes this speaks right to me. I went through a loop in the latter half of 2018 trying all the best of modern gaming: World of Warcraft, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild...
I have always loved games and been an enthusiastic gamer, but there was precious little fun to be had. My keyboard wary hands went through the motions, and I sat on my arse.
I sold off all my systems and found my mind open wide for reading again. Now, I have since discovered gog.com and it seems to be a splendourous portal for gamers of age. Casual, strategic, relaxing... It is much more my speed.
For me, I am a gamer — but my tastes rapidly and deeply changed with time. Smaller doses, more puzzling puzzles, and less comrades.
In my case, the games literally stay the same. I keep coming back to a handful of games. Master of Magic. Panzer General. XCOM2: Terror From the Deep. Railroad Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon 2. Sid Meirs' Alpha Centauri. Heroes of Might and Magic 2. The last game I've added to the rotation is FTL. I have next to no time for gaming, so I'm very happy to fire up DosBox or Wine and spend 20 minutes with an old favorite.
What all those games have in common is that I know them very well, it's easy to save at any point and come back later, and I can play them from my archive without looking for a physical disc.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 128 ms ] threadI would argue that games have not stayed the same. Video games have become aggressively monetized at the expense of the consumer. Companies are now looking to exploit a small percentage of core users, "whales", hoping to get them to spend hundreds of dollars on microtransactions.
There is also a focus on "live services". Basically releasing the game as a poorly constructed product, and then slowly updating it over years and years while charging for the updates along the way. Look at the most played games right now, and you will notice very few of them are from 2018, but rather are older games that have been continually updated.
Some examples:
1. The other day I logged back into my Destiny 2 account after lapsing over the holiday seasons, and to my dismay I discover that I am now expected to pay an additional $20 on top of the $80 I have already paid total for the game.
2. So, I decide to log into a game that had launched around a year ago but was not in a state I considered acceptable, Battletech. I figured more time in the oven would make it better. BOOM. $20 season pass, otherwise I am locked out of new parts of the game.
3. So I switch over to Call of Duty Black Ops: 4, a game I had not played in a few months but thought was fun enough when I started playing. In the time between they added gameplay affecting micro-transactions AND a $20 "expansion pack" that consisted of a few levels.
4. Last year's Star Wars BattleFront 2 was LAMBASTED due to being a full-priced $60 product which monetized all progression with an absurdly expensive loot-box scheme. After people did the math they realized it could cost hundreds of dollars to acquire some of the characters in the game, and that the drops from the loot boxes heavily influenced gameplay.
Video games have become excessively monetized. Companies have realized they can make more money by making the same games over and over again. Gone is the risky, interesting "AA" games of the last generation. Now the only games are being made are extremely expensive to produce and obnoxiously monetized "AAA" games. Now that these companies have gotten a taste of the loot-box whale money, they do not want to go without it.
Take a look at the work done by Jim Sterling for a more detailed analysis.
edit, adding more thoughts:
Another thing is that they are all the same games. Low TTK shooters turned into team shooters transformed into Battle Royale games.
There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore. Games with interesting movement mechanics. It is all low TTK tactical shooters. Low TTK is an equalizer between low-skill and high-skill players. Even a very bad player can get a point if they sneak up on a good player.
The thing is, the mobile game industry is RAKING IN CASH and the AAA game industry wants a piece of that action. It is becoming hard to justify creating Call of Duty 5 if you can make a lame gatcha mobile game and make more money. Investors want that mobile game money so the big game companies are getting desperate chasing that dragon.
Side note: I've recently played Battlefront 2. The old one.
Eventually we just say fuck it and go back to counterstrike :)
Well, there's Quake Champions, but they're really struggling. They tried taking Quake and incorporating a lot of the features from more modern games (micro transactions, loot boxes, character classes like Overwatch) and ended up with a hot mess.
I felt it was a re-tread rather than an evolution.
Lawbreakers was a pretty good game with interesting movement mechanics, but I feel that it suffered from trying to be too pretty and mediocre level design.
> There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore. Games with interesting movement mechanics.
Both Paladins and Overwatch have characters with interesting movement, to the point where almost every Overwatch character has a movement ability. Both are following in the footsteps of TF2 movement. In contrast, the funky movement mechanics in Quake weren't always explicitly designed and were often much more difficult to execute properly - that's fine in a symmetric game but causes balance issues in anything asymmetric.
Fortnite and CoD have both added a grappling hook, and Fortnite in particular seems to be experimenting quite a bit with movement via jump pads, planes, trolleys, bouncey-shardy-things (you can tell I don't play it...). The latest Spiderman game has seen universal praise for the swinging movement. My personal favorite game of 2018 was Wizard of Legend, which has a no-cooldown dash ability - something that would normally break balance.
Anyway, I think I'm just trying to say there's a ton of experimentation with movement mechanics in modern games.
Compare Overwatch and Paladins to Quake or Tribes and the differences are stark.
The movement mechanics in Overwatch are less interesting TO ME than what we had in the past.
> Both Paladins and Overwatch have characters with interesting movement, to the point where almost every Overwatch character has a movement ability.
A movement ability like "Jump high and then walk very slowly" or "Boost jump and then glide with pack" are not particularly interesting to me. Nor are they experimental They had been done many times before. The entire game is basically a reworked TF2.
In Quake, everyone had access to the rocket jump and plasma climb. Everyone could strafe jump and move at absurd speeds ALL THE TIME and it made the game CRAZY FAST and fun. Other than Quake live, I cannot think of a modern competitive game that does this.
In Overwatch, you are still mostly walking around at a snails pace waiting for your ult to charge.
> Both are following in the footsteps of TF2 movement.
I would argue that TF2 walked in the footsteps of TFC, which was literally spawned from the Quake mod Team Fortress, which utilized the weapon and movement mechanics of Quake in a class based system.
Really, when you get down to it, many of the weapons and abilities in Overwatch can trace their lineage to Quake.
Off the top of my head: Junkrat has the grenade launcher, Pharah has the classic rocket launcher, Sombra has the teleporter, widow has the rail gun, Torbjorn has the shotgun, Bastion has the machine gun, Winston has the chain gun, Symmetra has the lightning gun.
> In contrast, the funky movement mechanics in Quake weren't always explicitly designed
This is a misconception. They discovered strafe jumping in Quake 1 and then ported it to the sequels because it was FUN and people liked it. I agree they were more difficult to execute, but if you play the game you get then hang of it very quickly: The difficulty is greatly exaggerated.
> and were often much more difficult to execute properly - that's fine in a symmetric game but causes balance issues in anything asymmetric.
This is totally fair, and I agree that they are different games. I just prefer the old-style Quake games to the new hero shooters. And you cannot deny there have been a LOT of them haha
Additionally, these movement mechanics were fun ON THEIR OWN! I still enjoy hoping into a Quake Live race server from time to time to see how fast I can go.
> Fortnite and CoD have both added a grappling hook, and Fortnite in particular seems to be experimenting quite a bit with movement via jump pads, planes, trolleys, bouncey-shardy-things (you can tell I don't play it...). The latest Spiderman game has seen universal praise for the swinging movement.
Fortnite and CoD have the occasional opportunity to utilize different movement mechanics. This is very different from the deeply integrated movement mechanics of Quake and Tribes.
Additionally, they are EXACTLY the battle royale and fast TTK realistic shooters I called out elsewhere in my comment.
> My personal favorite game of 2018 was Wizard of Legend, which has a no-cooldown dash ability - something that would normally break balance.
WoL is a teeny little indie game. Great game, but far outside of mainstream gaming.
As an adult, I have social circles both within and outside of my job, a relationship (though she likes playing video games too), I have new hobbies, and hobbies that I can't do at work. I also have time and money to be able to go out and do new things that I couldn't do when I was younger.
As a result, when I do play, usually it is in 30 to 45 minute spurts, usually the weekend. Even then, it is usually a social thing. My siblings and I have Switches, and we have been bonding over playing online with each other (we don't live near each other), or I will play with my significant other.
The competitive one is an interesting thing. I have never been a competitive person, but I think the competitiveness drops off because off bad experiences. I completely stopped playing Magic the Gathering because of dealing with toxic players, and I played online with strangers for exactly one session, and that was soured by toxic gamers. I imagine a lot of others have had similar experiences, and that sours that sort of competition for the majority of people.
EDIT: I forgot to add, being on a computer for 8 hours a day at work also really kills my desire to stare at another screen for even more time.
I've actually gravitated towards single-player, mainly due to time constraints. That is one of the reasons I still love FTL, I can actually do an entire playthrough in one sitting. And the only multi-player game I play is Elite Dangerous, which is boredom personified (and I haven't seen another player in game in over 9 months).
I don't agree with the doom and gloom tone of the article, however. In my experience, there has never been a better time to be a gamer with non-mainstream tastes. Especially if you are on PC, the indie market and kickstarter have revived things like CRPGS.
Sadly, we wanted to do that with Super Mario Party and Super Smash Bros (we played those games extensively as kids), and both of those games online mode are hampered to the point that we tried playing it once, then going back to Overcooked.
- Monument Valley
- A Good Snowman Is Hard to Build
- Mini Metro
- Braid
- The Witness
- Snakebird
- Gunpoint
- Spelunky
- Don't Starve
- Factorio
- Stardew Valley
- Faster than Light
- Kerbal Space Program
- Dungeon Warfare (if you're a TD fan)
- Return of Obra Dinn
- Cities: Skylines
- Frostpunk
- All Zachtronic's games
- RimWorld
- Darkest Dungeon
- OneShot
- The Talos Principle
- Portal, if you haven't already played it
- Submachine
- The Myst series
- The Room series
- The Tomorrow Corporation collection
- Anything by Amanita Design
Is the study longitudinal, ie does it follow gamers as they get older?
You want to do that, because you don't want to confuse the issue of what cohort the gamer belongs to. You want to differentiate between "people like games less as they age" and "people who were born in 1980 like games less than people born in 1990".
In my own experience, once you have kids, that's it. You can't invest in any game that takes time to learn. Before kids, you could have a 2nd job healing or tanking for 3-8 hours every evening after your real life job. Or working on your shooting skills. Or watching RTS videos.
Now I can do casual gaming, which works when you're commuting, but it's not nearly the same commitment.
They were born in the early 50s, long before computers and consoles were anything like mainstream. They watched us game as kids, but it wasn't until very recently that either of them has actually tried playing much. They're both responding to games like teenagers, but that's anecdotes, not data.
I'd love to know if it's an issue of age alone, age+responsibilities (i.e., do 30- to 40-year-olds who don't have kids or other time-consuming responsibilities shift their preferences the same way equivalent-aged parents do?), or age of their gaming career (i.e., do people who pick up gaming in their middle years or later start with the same interests as young gamers and gradually age out of them with time, or do they start with the interests of "old" gamers?).
For christmas, I bought my kids a Switch, and I've definitely been playing it way more than them. Just finished Mario Odyssey, and it was a lot of fun, and I think I may be addicted. Getting the new Zelda later today...
I think my brain just needed the right game and some time off. 20 years did the trick.
Nintendo puts a lot of effort into making gaming a more locally social, and especially family-oriented, form of entertainment. And even for some single-player franchises like Mario and Zelda they are adept at creating whimsically enjoyable experiences, so their games often transcend age boundaries. But games like Pokemon, with its grinding and random battles, doesn't.
Show your kids how to save and how NOT to overwrite your save in BoTW.
Having my kids blow away my ~20 hours of work completely deflated me and I have not been able to get back into it since.
I don't want business to try and addict me. I don't even want character progression or saves of any kind -- except your story progress.
I feel part of console games and a lot of handheld consoles -- and older-generation games like Half Life, Quake and Mortal Kombat -- get it right.
Nowadays most games try their damnest to latch onto our sunk cost fallacy brain vulnerabilities.
Many modern PC games imitate the mobile games monetization model and are increasingly hostile to any semblance of long-lasting community. Throw in the mix the clueless multiplayer implementations of many games where people are as toxic as it can get and it's easily understandable why so many people leave those games when the novelty wears off.
We're gonna transition fully to console [and partially to PC] single player games with good stories and graphics (Lara Croft, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War come to mind) -- as soon as we handle our logistics problem.
I must have hit the jackpot then, because in my 40s, games absolutely feel to me now like they used to. They continue to excite me and some of them even still take over all my free time for a while, pushing out all my other hobbies and what little social life I have.
Do all of them? Nope, but they didn't all hit me like that back in my teens, either. Some of them are just astounding, though, and after playing one of those games I actually get a little sad that no other game is there to take me up to that same level of fun.
The most recent game for me like that was Ni No Kuno 2, which turned out to be a lot better than I expected. (I hated the combat in NNK 1 and didn't complete it, and wasn't expecting much from NNK 2.) So glad to be proven wrong there.
Other games like Uru, Fallout New Vegas, and The Witness have done the same in the past, and there's usually at least 1 each year that does it for me, if not more.
Many of the games that don't hit that level of obsession still are a ton of fun, too.
I think that's as much because most of those games contain tons of what I'd call cynical time and money sinks. Loot boxes, RNG designed to keep you playing "enough" so force you to farm. Building weapons and armour, delays or maps, even the whole gameplay around those $$ related additions. I don't like open world games that are so tightly on rails it's almost like playing an old laserdisc game like Dragon's Lair. The first couple of Call of Duty games were very much this. So dull.
We mostly play indie titles and can spend as much time as we ever did. We spend time because it's fun. If it's designed to take time, I'll try something else. Sometimes, they'll take far more hours than the alleged AAA titles. Factorio, Shenzen or some of the recent (and very welcome) resurrection of turn based RPGs like Divinity and Pillars of Eternity have all felt far more substantial than any major titles.
Of the majors I can think of Civ and Skyrim, and if Paradox count as a major Europa Universalis. That really is about it. Of the rest, I couldn't care less. I'd prefer Skyrim to be, or at least feel, more like the depth and complexity of Morrowind.
I think we both tend to play in shorter spurts - real life shows up that bit more.
How much of that is me aging, and how much the arrival of the ability to milk revenue from every game? :)
Now, I wholeheartedly agree on your assessment of many games being cynical time and money sinks. It's really a shame. The coolest thing to me about a video game is the world it creates. And I'd rather not my time in that world be devoted to picking up coins everywhere. BioShock Infinite, I'm looking at you. Horizon Zero Dawn, on the other hand, does have some monotony, but overall the game is so enthralling you don't even mind. We need more games like that.
I play videogames, but I can't call myself a gamer. Maybe I was back when I had free time to practice fighting games, and played competitively. Maybe I was a gamer when I played a bunch of niche titles, regardless of genre. Maybe I was a gamer when I collected rare games and hardware. I'm certainly not a gamer now though.
I think about the decline of time I spend on gaming. A lot of it comes down to not having enough time (with a full time job and other interests I didn't have when I was younger), but I'll make time for the right game. I think the article jives with this, but I'm not sure if this is specific to gaming. It reminds me of a similar article I read on here a few years ago that talked about how after a certain age, people stop seeking out new music as well.
As a single data point to add to the discussion, while Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is available for sale, I chose to purchase Modern Warfare 2 instead, for me, my wife, and a few friends for below the cost of a single license for the former game. The graphics and gameplay are considerably richer, in my opinion, than PUBG and Fortnite. The graphics are comparable.
This is a staggering revelation to me. To get something dramatically better in terms of visual fidelity, I would have to purchase a game like Battlefield V. But the cost is unappealing in a global market with several industries increasing prices across the board.
I'm searching for better values in a world with increasing costs, and finding that many people are still playing these older games, in part because they're not much different than new blockbusters.
Additionally, I'd rather not pay 60 USD for what has been called at times a "beta." I'm good.
I recently picked up Batman Arkham Knight for £4 and Doom for ~£7. Both absolutely phenomenal games, graphics that rival anything out in 2018 and of course all those nasty PC port bugs totally squashed.
It also means building a PC capable of doing them justice is a little more affordable too.
It took me a month of 8 hours a day one summer to get marginally ok. I'm guessing it would take me a similar amount of time now (15 years out). I don't really want to take that time, though.
Part of it is that games no longer challenge me like they once did. I played through Breath of the Wild and of the 100 or so puzzle shrines, only a few took more than 5 seconds to figure out their gimmick. However my girlfriend played it and would routinely get stuck for multiple hours. She is smart, but did not grow up playing games like I did. Her play style reminds me of how I played through them as a child. I have just learned all the tricks, the little hints that game developers put in to guide the player. BOTW is a well designed game, but that means it uses standard patterns to teach the player, and I am more attuned to those patterns than she is.
The other side of challenge in games is just grinding skill. Like learning all the characters in Smash Brothers and how to counter them, or improving my aim in Counter Strike. At the end of the day that is a more muscle memory based skill, and I am just not interested in sinking the time into it.
Rogue likes are the closest to the challenge I’m looking for. But even those eventually reduce to memorizing all the random events and forming a plan based on possible future events.
* Arma 3 because its a sandbox and I can script my own missions etc.
* Doom reboot, purely for the nostalgia
For older games from my childhood like Half Life, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and Command and Conquer. I might dust them out for an hour or two but the novelty goes away quickly, maybe its because of ageing graphics or I don't remember them as I used to.
Another factor is that working on a PC all day makes its less desirable for me to then come home and sit on my home PC and play games.
The reboot situation is interesting as it gives companies a chance to make money out of an old IP and the fanbase can rekindle some of their younger days playing those games.
This has been my experience as well. Over the last few years over and over again I'll start games I've played before but within an hour or two I've lost interest in playing. I remember enough of the overall plot and mechanics that the only thing that still sticks out to me is the repetitive, grindy bits of the game (and all games have them). A few times I've turned to cheating to level characters, unlock stuff, bypass all the grind parts and just enjoy the story or game mechanics, but even then it's not as interesting as it used to be.
EDIT: this is a response to the comments here, not the article.
Putting on my subjective cap, I personally don't like the move towards such content. Nothing to do with the actual underlying messages (Samus has and probably always will be my favorite Nintendo character, and I actually don't mind the new Doctor), but rather the hamfisted, uninspired, force fed way it is delivered these days. If I were the audience this was targeted towards, I'd be fairly pissed as they are wrapping these good messages in a package that requires zero critical thinking.
Even the big studios are starting to learn that pay-to-win and crazy microtransactions turn people off-- the business model for Fortnite, the biggest game out there, is pretty user-friendly by providing a free game with 100% of gameplay available for $0. All purchases are cosmetic and (I believe) aren't locked in lootboxes. EA famously rolled back their microtransaction models last year after a few bad releases.
I love that studios are trying out new business models, even if some suck. Some of my favorite games (Counterstrike and Crusader Kings 2) use user-friendly "microtransactions" to continue 6+ years of development and feedback.
Because their business model was set as illegal in several EU countries.
2018 - Subnautica, God of War
2017 - Horizon Zero Dawn, Prey, Sundered
2016 - Hitman 2016, Life is Strange
2015 - MGS 5, Invisible Inc
2014 - The Long Dark, Factorio
I feel like there's quite a bit of variety out there (these days more then ever), and while I've gradually dropped various genres from my list of "things I'm willing to play", there's still enough to keep it as one of my primary sources of entertainment. Roguelikes/roguelites, especially, have done well the past few years (Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, FTL, Risk of Rain, Darkest Dungeon, etc.) and provide high quality, no filler gameplay at low cost, and often in convenient time increments.
---------- 1. Gaming is an escapism.
That's why many people hesitate to call themselves gamers or even admit it in certain (more conservative) social settings. Thinking back, gaming was a chill activity for me only a single-digit percent of the time and now at 38 y/o I am ashamed that I didn't admit that to myself earlier. And yes, many people still view "gamers" and teenagers with no cares at all. They haven't noticed that the world changed and these teenagers now play together with their kids. And that even company CEOs have admitted to be gaming.
---------- 2. Games aren't increasing in diversity or quality.
Quite the contrary, even the big AAA studios drop the ball and start milking nostalgia -- recent releases like Fallout 76 and WoW's latest expansion Battle for Azeroth are a prime example. Them not being quality games is not an universal truth of course but if you visit any gaming forum outlet you'll quickly discover they are a very divisive topic. This wasn't true even as back as 2-3 years ago for many games (the above two included).
---------- 3. I'm glad the article debunked that your abilities start to deteriorate at your 30s.
At 38 I can still pop in a random Quake3 server and absolutely dominate the others there. Many times they teamed up 5v1 against me and still lost on total score. As you get "older" (if 30s are "being old") your abilities can even self-perfect -- my wife several times noted that when I played a game for a week and quit it and then got back to it 6 months later I was suddenly extremely good at it and better than her who played it casually for those 6 months. It's as if your brain has been periodically replaying your experience with the game and gradually perfected the schemata that makes you much more efficient at the game. Probably while you slept.
---------- 4. Aggressive monetization.
As the stable income from selling games dwindles, many businessmen imagine that they are forced to introduce microtransactions or release half-finished games and then basically make you pay for a DLC that costs as much as the original game itself for you to get the "full" game -- this isn't an undeniable fact but many feel that way about a lot of EA / Ubisoft games.
Whatever the reason, microtransactions are killing the desire of many to play. We the humans get emotionally invested in everything we do. The fact that the businesses want to prey on the sunk cost fallacy, or nostalgia, or bait-and-switch tactics, is something that even people at 20 years old now reliably detect and try to stay away from.
The customers are getting smarter and the business makes less and less effort to market / advertise their games in an appealing way. Cleavage shots or shiny costumes and mounts don't seem to be cutting it anymore -- or at least not so well as the businesses would like.
---------- 5. Our priorities change, yes.
I ain't gonna bore anyone with sob stories but I had a pretty awful life and learned helplessness is something I have to fight my every waking second (people keep telling me I do an awesome job and I honestly can't believe it and that's not a fake modesty, I really can't; many other examples abound). At certain point you just sit down and start thinking what you are doing with your life -- and time, and energy. That the popular breeds of gaming lost most of its appeal is indeed a gradual process as the article assesses it to be.
And I indeed don't care about competition, like at all. Nobody can tempt me with "you're just afraid I am gonna beat you". I just shrug and say "you're a champion, are we done with this discussion?".
Me and my wife recently chatted at length about our diminished pleasure in games and concluded that we are gonna buy a PS4 Pro and a very comfy couch and probably won't touch a multiplayer game more than a few times a year. It's just how it is. She ...
Then again, I've gotten deeply in chess lately...
I have always loved games and been an enthusiastic gamer, but there was precious little fun to be had. My keyboard wary hands went through the motions, and I sat on my arse.
I sold off all my systems and found my mind open wide for reading again. Now, I have since discovered gog.com and it seems to be a splendourous portal for gamers of age. Casual, strategic, relaxing... It is much more my speed.
For me, I am a gamer — but my tastes rapidly and deeply changed with time. Smaller doses, more puzzling puzzles, and less comrades.
What all those games have in common is that I know them very well, it's easy to save at any point and come back later, and I can play them from my archive without looking for a physical disc.