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Losing Interest In Games - A Natural Progression?
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?"
I feel like my gaming glory days are behind me. I see all the latest games that I *want* to play, but either I can't bring myself to play (let alone buy) or I find something else more important to do (like programming). I think it's just age. I've heard from others though that gamers that turn about 40ish seem to pickup gaming again (assuming their spouse, if they have one, let's them).
I've not played or bought new games in a while. .. and usually loose interrest when the demo ends.
.. you hunt for bugs, which kinda kills the playing experiance.
I usually download the demos and play them
There are some games that I still buy, mostly RPG style games with much more story line based gaming then action.
Part of my loss of interrest in working for gaming companies and doing QA (quility assurance) testing. After a while you no longer play the game
Just my take on loosing interrest. Maybe try games you always found boring? explore new horizons with games ?
bain
Sanity is a majority vote.
Sometimes, you realise that the games that you play are repetitive and monotonous, and are really aimed at the younger population. Sometimes (and this actually happens), you purely lose interest in those games. A human being can only perform a repetitive task (which is what current gaming is all about) -that much-.
:)
I would assume that given a good, involving game, or an in-depth roleplaying game, you would be more eager to play it, because of the story involved. Sadly, the current trends are reeking of filler instead of actual gameplay, and games are usually almost carbon-copies of one another. This doesn't really lead to an urge to play something
I had this happen to me much sooner than you, I believe at about the age of 15, when I realised that games have become utterly repetitive and in some cases genuine boring.
Then again, it could be the 'growing up' stage, when you realise that you just don't have as much time as you used to have before, and gaming is shifted to priority B.
But don't worry, you will still enjoy a good gaming session once in a while, humans need games to stay sane
For me its mainly a lack of time.
When I was younger I had oodles of free time so I was able to lose days playing the latest games.
Now I dont have the time to spare what with working, running a house, girlfriend... All the things you tend to aquire as you get older.
I still love games, but find myself trying to spend time finishing th eones I have rather than buying new games.
I have no sig yet I must scream.
Congratulations! Sounds like you are moving up. This phenomenon happens in lots of areas of activity, not just gaming.
You have the urge to be proactive, not reactive. To produce rather than consume.
You don't have to totally give up $EARLIER_STUFF when you move on up to $NEW_STUFF. That's a common but erroneous belief. You're just adding some more activities that are way more satisfying to you as you are now, with your increased capacity for thinking, etc.
Do not fear that you are getting dull as you get older. Which is sharper, the mind that sees a game and says "Cool!" or the mind that conceptualizes it in the first place?
Any change like this generally requires some re-thinking of how you define yourself, but I think you'll like the new definition better.
"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
It's sad to see an old gamer quit the hobby. Maybe someday you'll have more free time and some interesting game will catch your eye. Until then, good luck and have fun with whatever you do!
It's tough isn't it? I remember when I was about 13 I started to get bored with my matchbox cars and racetrack. It used to be so much fun putting piles of books under the track so the cars would do little jumps, or seeing how big you could make the loop without the cars just falling onto their backs like little turtles.
Then it just started to get boring. I didn't want to play with my old toys any more. Oddly enough, this didn't cause me a huge friggin existential crisis. I didn't post to some Goddam website to find out if the other 13 year olds were suffering a similar confusing emotional trauma. Instead, I took the 'growing up' route, and simply grew up.
Why don't you try the same? Growing up isn't as hard as many people make out. Here are some key tips:
1. Don't idolise your lifestyle. Don't kid yourself that playing Quake II on the office LAN all night was actually some incredibly cool 'in the zone' moment of one-ness with the God of electronic entertainment. It was just being 24.
2. Realise that new things can be fun. If games no longer thrill you, try books, or maybe taking an art class. Perhaps gardening or cooking will be your new forms of relaxation in the daunting world of 'being older than you are right now'.
3. Don't make such a huge deal about it. That way, all the other people who don't give a shit, frankly, won't be disturbed. In time, you too will stop giving a shit, allowing you to simply do something new and different without worrying.
I too wish that computer games gave me as much fun as they did back when I played X-Com for 12 hours straight, or started dreaming about Baldur's Gate or Syndicate Wars.
But then, I wish getting that playing on the swings could keep me happy for 2 hours. I wish that colouring in a picture of a clown gave me a sense of achievement. I wish that I really did believe my lego men were still involved in a desperate war against my brother's lego men.
But, d00d, it ain't going to last, so stop asking where all the good times went, and find something new and fun to do. I mean, why do you think people end up having children?...
-----
This is a phase that everyone goes through. Either because of something in your life (often something subtle) or just a batch of mediocre games that temporarily sour your opinion of the entire medium, you stop playing games for awhile. I did the same thing when I was around 17. I stopped playing games for about a year or two straight and missed out on most of the interesting games that were released for the original PlayStation. But it wasn't a part of "growing up", "putting away childish things", or some other moronic platitude that non-gamers would give you. It's just a temporary change in the way you choose to entertain yourself.
This is something that we all do on a regular basis, but we don't really notice it until it strikes a medium that we actually care about. Personally, there was a time when I watched at least a couple of movies on DVD every week, burning through them at about the same rate as most regulars buyers/renters do. But now I haven't watched a movie on DVD in a good three months or so, but I haven't even noticed it. Why? Because I don't visit six or seven movie sites a day, but I do visit Insert Credit, GameSpot, Video Fenky, GAF, The Magic Box, Penny Arcade, and Slashdot Games just about every day. If you're actually posting on this site, then I'm guessing that you have a pretty similar set of sites that you visit.
I'm guessing that you'll pick up something really good in about a year or two and then you'll be addicted again just like the rest of us. But then again, if you really are of the mentality that "games are kids stuff", then maybe you'll deprive yourself of them forever. I really don't see how Metal Gear Solid or Knights of the Old Republic are any more childish than any of the TV shows or movies that I watch, but that's just me. Maybe that's why I really don't see myself abstaining from video games as I grow up any more than I see myself suddenly abstaining from television, movies, or music.
I shall now indulge in reckless and flagrant navel-gazing.
Isn't a game simply a set of arbitrary objectives made difficult by arbitrary obstacles?... but made "fun" by gradual progression and feedback?
I believe that people like to use their minds and actually create "things to do" when there isn't any. When I was younger, I didn't have many obstacles, so I got my "work" on by subjecting myself to the purchased goals and obstacles, IE, a complicated game.
Now that I'm older, I've made my own game: my life. I've created my own "arbitrary" goals and have to work against obstacles to reach those.
At the end of the day, I'm tired from playing a game that's more important to me. Myself.
Yes. That's right. I'm tired from playing with myself.
My quaint little theory works best on brain games. For example, if I have to manage 20 people 40 hours a week, it's not likely I'll enjoy Railroad Tycoon 3 on the weekend. (But that could just be me.) On the other hand, a alpha-state twitchy game might be a nice break from analytical stuff.
I think there's a concept of "control" as well: in one's teens and early twenties, many aspects of one's life is beyond their control. That changes with age, usually and hopefully.
Another thing that I have noticed now that I've "grown up" is that I simply have not enough time to play all the games I'm interested in. I'm 25 and work full-time and have a house and wife to attend to, family/friend obligations, etc., and I'm lucky if I get to game for 2 hours in as many weeks.
Sometimes I have wondered the same thing as you, "have I lost my interest in gaming," when I have several games I was excited about but I simply don't bother playing. Then I realized that the games I was interested in in the past have started to bore me.
It's the same as anything really. I'm also bored with stupid action flicks, pulp novels, and Star Trek. I'd much rather watch something with substance, action or no, read a long series of classic books(eg. The Foundation series), or non-fiction(eg. The Making of the Atomic Bomb - brilliant book BTW), and as for TV, I really don't care if I miss an episode of one of my favorite show(although I do enjoy 24 and haven't missed an episode, heh).
You get the point. Tastes vary over time. While you may always enjoy a good movie/book/game/etc., you won't want the same thing over and over. And then there's the time and social factors. Don't fret. Things change. Adapt.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I'm going on 30--I nearly fucked up my college education by spending aeons of time on Netrek and progressed from that to C&C, to Red Alert, to Tomb Raider (my girlfriend loves to watch me play for some reason) to Half Life to Homeworld to Deus Ex to Battlefield 1942 (which I play pretty often.)
I was never too interested in always trying out the latest and greatest, but I notice increasingly that, once I've found something I enjoy, I tend to stick with it for far long--it just holds my attention better.
I don't know how people have time to always finish the newest games right when they come out and move on to something new--the only times I do that is when I find something episode-based or story-based (like Half Life), play it through once, then move on, but I take my time with that, sort of like reading a good book a bit at a time before going to bed.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
The technology has now been developed which allows several thousand players to play simultaneously in a persistent world. Many people are already addicted to the current generation of MMORPG games, but RPGs are only the start: Sony released the world's first MMOFPS (Planetside last year, taking online tactical warfare to whole new levels. In a good team like the Renegade Legion the list of tactics you can deploy in the field is almost endless.
I think this is just the start. Bringing massive player cooperation into many different genres could add a whole new dimension to those games. We're riding the first wave of the MMO tide and I think it's going to be as revolutionary as the switch from offline multiplayer gaming to online gaming.
I find that lately I've been looking for something different in the games I play. I still play the single-player action games (Splinter Cell) and I still drool over the latest incredible graphics (UT2k4, Painkiller), but what I where I've been spending most of my time is social gaming. Games like MarioKart: Double Dash and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicle, where you interact with the people in the room with you is not only relatively new, it's loads of fun.
--
Francis
For me there are a few reasons why I don't play as many games thesedays:
:-/
1. Less time. Got other stuff to do. Study, and work. Work is okay but study consumes a lot of outside hours too. There's always more you could be doing. I find it harder to put time into games now. In the back of my mind, I'm always aware of what else I could be doing.
2. Other interests. Other stuff can be fun too. A few years ago I never read books just for my own interest, now I do. And of all things I've been learning Japanese recently, again something I never would have been interested in when I was younger. I guess I want to expand more, comes with age.
3. Age of fellow players. This one is pretty big. There's only one game I still play occasionaly now, and that's Live For Speed, an excellent, high-quality, independently developed racing sim. The online play is the best I've come across. But while the competition is good, the competitors themselves mostly seem to be guys who are 13-25 (mostly immature), or guys who are 45+. High school kids or men trying to fit in a few games around their spouse. I feel a little out of place.
Aside from LFS, the last game I played for a while was Grand Theft Auto 3. But I think I played that more for the radio stations & music, and the scale of the city rather than gameplay. I tired of it pretty quick. I definately have less tolerance for repetition now.
Times change
Fifty bucks?!?!
That's a week of groceries for cryin' out loud! I'll wait until next year when it hits the $10 bargain rack at Wal-Mart.
I seem to remember going through that with beer, too. At some point, everything just started looking expensive.
Sincerely,
An old fogey
P.S. Just you wait you young buX0rz, pretty soon THE RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, NIRVANA and PEARL JAM will be on the oldies stations. HAAAAA-HA-HA-HA!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Yeah, tis true. Once you mature, then you start having a wife, kids, house, kitchen remodel, quality time with the family, a real job which ends up being more like 60 hours a week, going out to dinner, etc. etc. there just isn't as much time for games. In order to become Good, you have to play the games a LOT. When you don't have the time, you end up spending time on other things.
:-)
Now my computer hobbies include much more programming, playing with neat open source stuff like Asterisk (open source phone system), home automation (replacing furnace controls with a linux box), etc. Hey, I LIKE controlling the boiler water temperature based on wind speed and outside temperature, and being able to call home and turn the lights off in the basement that I just remembered that I left on as I step off the plane in Hawaii...
It's true that Id, Epic, and Blizzard have all been refining and refining their original ideas: Doom, Warcraft, Unreal. UT2k4 is a refinement of UT2k3, which is a refinement of UT, etc. But despite this recycling of brands, I don't think that discounts their talent or creativity. They are the only ones who are actually doing it right, while all of the knock-offs try to recreate their success and do it poorly. These games are wildly popular, which is a big part of the equation; can you call a game 'good' if nobody plays it?
UT2k4 is a great FPS, and introduces a great blend of genres with a nice mix of new ideas and old but proven features. Doom III should be the same, recapturing what the original Doom once did in its tension and atmosphere. These staple game franchises only get better with age; after all, just how much can you improve on perfection? And their place in the market is clear: they are the founding pillars of the industry around which the lesser visionaries swarm for inspiration. They will eventually fall like all things must, but new pillars will arise and we will again witness the same structure: the initial captivation, the continuous refinement, then eventual exhaustion. But their mark on gaming will never fade.
Don't get me wrong, I understand perfectly well the gist of your post, but I think you are jumping the gun.
There are a lot of hobbies that people "grow out" of, such as playing with matchbox cars. However, there are some hobbies that can have more staying power, such as reading, movies, model trains, etc. People don't look at those things and say, "Grow up!" Gaming happens to be one of those new hobbies that people without prior exposure to don't understand and assume to be a hobby for young people, like comic books. But, apparently that isn't necessarily the case. Sure, there are a lot of *"losers" who still read comics and play games at 40, but with the advent of adult-oriented comics(ie. "graphic novels") and games, many older folk (ie. non-"loser" older folk) are continuing with those childish hobbies.
At 25, I don't read the same comics I did when I was 13(rather, I don't read any comics), but some new graphic novels (mentioned here on /.) have interested me.
YMMV, different strokes, etc. But please, don't be an old pompous scab telling us youthful folk how to live.
Paraphrasing:
- someone less of a dullard than you* - are they really "losers," I prefer not to label someone so harshly simply for continuing with something I consider to be somewhat childish. Perhaps they just didn't sell out and murder their inner child in order to be accepted as an adult. Or perhaps they are indeed losers and should be derided as such until their sad, lonely death.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Look at the half-life mods: Natural Selection, Counterstrike, et al - They're massively more innovative than half-life itself.
Yes and no. Half-Life (and Valve's attention to it and the community over its span) really is the one of the biggest innovations for gaming in recent history. HL was the first "best" FPS, integrating innovative level design with a compelling story that made you want to go forward in the game. There's a reason it won every award it was nominated for (excepting game of the year, which went to zelda). It pushed FPS into the future.
Then Valve did the amazing thing of releasing the SDK and actively supporting independent developers. CS, Natural Selection, none of those mods would have been possible without Valve actively supporting them. Yes there were mods for Quake, but Valve obviously did something differently than Id and their mod scene exploded. in a way no other game before (or after, yet) has done. The fact that games running on a 6 year old graphic engine are still the most popular online FPS out there shows that Valve really hit upon something.
HL2 won't be as innovative and valve will likely enter the ranks of id, blizzard, epic, etc., as they churn out incremental advances. but to call HL not innovative is to miss out on the community that Valve helped spawn around the game.
If you're a fan of the classics, then really, gaming is moving away from you. Classics meaning like Pac-Man, Galga, etc. They're not going to make any more, because the classics are already there, and anything to try and capitalize on that will just be seen as a copy-cat. (EXCEPTION: Most current puzzle games I see is beeing Classic-ish. Simple gameplay, playing for points, not levels, etc.)
Myself? I tend to play more games now than ever. And I'm enjoying them more too. There are several reasons...The main reason is they're making more games I like, at least on consoles.
Things I like:
#1. The feeling of being busy and intense while not feeling frustrated and out-of control. Viewtiful Joe, being the best example (and one of the best games ever), as well you have Ratchet and Clank:Going Commando, the Dynasty Warriors series, Ikaragua and assorted others. (Some of which are not so good, like Enter The Matrix).
#2. Fighting games that are both deep yet accessable. They still make them, I still love them. Yes, Fighting games are deep. Always lived outside a big arcade scene, but locally, people here are big KoF nuts, and I had a fun time learning 97-98-99 into the ground. But Soul Calibur 2 is great with some people who know what they are doing.
#3. Better stories. This is both a function of technology, but it's also a function of ambition. I'm not just talking about your Final Fantasy type story. (Although the story for X was amazingly deep, yet because of the PoV aspect was still personal) I'm talking Ratchet and Clank with the hilarious commercials in it. Disgaea:Hour of Darkness, the story is just not what you expect at all. I think the word is...snarky among others. As part of the story, the best games just feel fleshed out. They have that something extra that keeps you in there. Interesting characters, if there's not the oppurtunity for a story..an interesting idea.
#4. Eye/Ear candy. I love this stuff. Sure sure, it's all about gameplay. But still. Starting a race in F-Zero GX, and watching all the light trails from the racers in front of you, as they are attacking each other and jockying for position. Metriod Prime, when an energy ball comes flying by your face, seeing Samus's reflection in her visor. At the same time, you have Audio candy as well. The radio stations in GTA 3/VC. The music from Final Fantasy games, (Especially X. Auron's theme pumped through a surround system is mesmorizing.)
Now, if you have better things to do, in your mind, that's a personal decision. But yeah, if those things don't matter to you, then it's fair to say that games have "left you".
As for PC games? PC games are unfortunatly boring. There's not much that's coming out that really pushes the boundries. And when they do, it tends to not be too unplayable. What do I play? Half-Life mods. Natural Selection mostly. I like some of the Microsoft games, believe it or not..Freelancer, Rise of Nations. What else is there? Not very much.
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.
That's an astute observation, and it's one that rings true outside the gaming business as well. Things may work differently in the movie industry (think of Altman and Van Sant), but as for the tech business, the music industry, or even clothing and other design, an initial success generally leads to iterative "improvements."
Of course, it may be too much to ask a person (or a team of like-minded people) to create something truly innovative twice in a lifetime. Aside from being risky, innovation is difficult. When creating a game, finding something that's both novel *and* fun for the gaming populace is much more difficult than just making something fun.
Within the context of scientific research, there has been some work to determine what environment leads to breakthroughs, but far too little. The preliminary indication is that a group of academics with varied backgrounds makes a better source than a homogeneous group. I suppose that after a first product, many gaming developers tend to think in terms of what has come before as opposed to what should come next. You can't get much more homogeneous in thought than that.
If I set aside 20 minutes or so, get comfortable and just start playing, that 20 minutes quickly becomes 20 hours and I've thrown away buckets of time like back in the day.
It's not actually a matter of losing interest in gaming, but rather becoming distracted away from your favourite distraction (if that makes sense).
Take FFTA on the GBA for example. I don't feel like playing it right now, but if my GBA somehow turned it's self on and jumped into my hands, you can bet I'd be playing for at least 3 hours.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
I don't think the situation is as gloomy as it may seem. Some game companies are, albeit slowly, realizing that they will have to base their games on something other than military strategy, giving us a violent heroic character to play, or letting us kill our friends.
Don't get me wrong. The next innovative games are not entirely new. They are just based on different systems and events that technology advancements allow us to explore more deeply. Two examples of innovative, yet-not are Republic: The Revolution and The Sims. Both systems (politics and real life) have been done before. They just haven't been done since the days of CGA monitors.
Your comment is pointlessly wrong on so many levels.
Games teach you skills, whether physical (hand eye coordination), emotional (confidence in ability to complete a task, or not), and mental (learn how to problem solve in ways others do not). You experience a wide variety of things you can never touch. The rewards are not immediate, but the fruit bear out in the long run.
I suppose you think reading is useless? After all, it's the same principle - reading a book does not affect THIS world. Not immediately, anyway. When you finished, there's no new car in the garage, no revolutions have been won or lost as a result, and the hungry are still hungry. But it has long term consequences, just like games. Games stimulate imagination, or they can stifle it. They have the power to improve or damage, just as much as anything else in this world.
I don't know that MMO (acronym rant) designers necessarily set out to create level treadmill just to keep people paying.
It really comes down to design philosophy, and what has sold in the past. Games without distinctive advancement treadmills (UO) simply don't get as many players as those that have such deplorable systems (EQ/DAoC/AC/etc). Financials aside, many designers see this as the key indicator that players want such systems.
Yes, as with all commercial ventures, the primary goal of commercial game companies is to make money, not innovate. So major funding is going to lead towards the designers that truly believe that what's worked before is what will work again. and that means treadmills, timesinks, and archetypes.
Since the bulk of players who are paying for these games aren't rejecting rehashes of an advancement system that makes no sense outside of pen-and-paper, there is little incentive for developers to create games without treadmills, camping, etc.
In fact, those commercial games/designers who do try to innovate typically get hammered by the majority of the playerbase and the gaming press for doing so (SWG/UO/etc).
There is innovation in the massmog genre - and as with most others, it's coming from the 'indy' scene (no need for dropping the fees or sharing load across companies). Games like Puzzle Pirates, Second Life, etc. truly stand out from the herd but comparatively, players aren't knocking down their doors. Personally, I believe that Blizzard's inevitable success with World of Warcraft is going to be seen as vindication for the status quo*, and the commercial situation will become entrenched.
*One could argue that Blizzard is leveraging the status quo of progression systems, while truly striving to entertain first and foremost. Even if true, the forcus on entertainment will not be recognized as the important requirement for success. Few FPS publishers seem to actually recognize what made half-life, halo, and goldeneye stand above games quake, unreal, or soldier of fortune. So there's little reason to believe they'll be able to recognize the importance placed on quality story, immersion and polish in the massmog arena.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
In order to become Good, you have to play the games a LOT. When you don't have the time, you end up spending time on other things.
I think that's a big part of it. In the rare occaisons when I do have time to play games these days, I sure don't do it online. Back when I was an avid gamer, my game of choice was Tribes 2. I played that game for several hours, every day. I was pretty damn good, too. It was a rare game where I didn't end up at the top of the scoreboard at the end of the match. If you DIDN'T play that game for several hours a day, all the people like me who did would stomp you.
It's the same thing now. I wouldn't mind picking up UT2k4 or something for a bit, but I know that I don't have time to play more than an hour or two a week. So as soon as I set foot on a server, BLAM, some 14 year old with nothing else to do all day is going to blow me away, and then hurl some kind of unintelligible racial slur at me.
Now I find that when I do play just about anything, it's on my Xbox. Mod chips are great. Oh, and I also switched to the Mac, and already played the three games for it.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Doing anything at all is wanking. Everyone dies in the end and all works fade away.
When Sol dies in 20 billion years, what could you possibly have done in your life that will matter then? When the last of the Milky Way is being crushed into a supermassive black hole quadrillions of years from now of what use will any of your life have been?
I rediscovered wargames, which I used to play as a teen--the maps and counters type, whereas now it's the PC versions. They're great for business travel--don't need a hefty laptop for them, can make a few moves as time permits, can let games stretch out for months, don't need the constant work on the hand-eye skills, which deteriorate with age anyway. I've always liked the thinking, reflective games better anyway, not the instinct/reaction speed games.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
*sigh* Yet another fool who equates video games with childishness.
Remember, video games were first introduced as bar/pub entertainment, as a replacement for pinball. Such establishments were where Pong was first introduced, and you can still find Merit kiosks on bar counters. And most of the surviving arcades in the States are "dating" destinations like GameWorks and Dave & Buster's which have things like Ladies Nights and ID check.
Video games ended up pigeon holed as "juvenile" like comic books and animation did. While I'm familar with the political history that doomed comics and cartoons to the children's ghetto, I'm not sure why video games shared this fate... Can any one offer any theories about this?
But I digress, besides the quote about "becoming old when you stop playing," there's another relevant quote. This one's by C. S. Lewis...
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown up.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
slow maturing nature of gaming.
If you've played computer games as far back as the atari/coleco days, then you have clocked in many days of game, that can probably amass to half a year by now. With that, you have played a varied spectrum of games in the early years, to more specific genres. Now, what's happening is that you want more complexity in the game play, along with more future possibilities for longer lasting game play.
For example, you play in an MMORPG and have reached the highest level, tons of credits, numerous weapons/items, have travelled the known universe of the game... what else is left? Retirement? Well... yeah.
Many games are not innovative enough to keep up with our desires for grander things in the game. Whether you have played that new game that just came out or not, there's a very good chance you have played the same functions in a previous game, and are just redoing what you've done before? Yeah, it has a new storyline, new characters, but same things are happening. I'm currently in that situation now, I've played a number of games, but find the mechanics to be too similar to previous games that after awhile, it's not new and it's no longer exciting.
You want excitement, go back to pen and paper rpgs, that way you have more flexible mechanics than the computer. I wish you luck in finding a game that can satisfy your gaming needs.
I love to play games. But I am selective. Games I don't enjoy are a bloody waste of my time. Fortunately I played so many different games that I now know what I like and can recognize quality. And quality does not mean "the coolest graphics". It means "the best gameplay". Therefore I don't mind playing older games. As long as they are fun.
It's the same with music. When you're a teen, you listen to all the crap that's pooped into the airwaves over the radio. Then your taste matures. You may get interested in classical music, or at least you realize there are only a few good bands out there.
It's the same with books. As a teen you read lots of SF (if you are a geeky type), but when you mature you realize most of it is just a waste of good trees.
Remember, most of it. Not all of it.
When you acquire a mature taste, you don't need to spend so much time on something to get your fix. But your love need not diminish.
Yeah; I recall back in the 60's, when I was the undisputed chess champ in my high-school crowd. After a while that started to get old. I mean, you can either become a pro chess player, one of the worst jobs in the world, or you can move on to something else. I did the latter.
Actually, I started playing the piano a lot. The second-worst job in the world. Now, several instruments later, and with pianos transformed into a zillion descendant instruments, it still hasn't grown old.
But I also became a computer geek, so I can earn money. And I got into network programming, so I can take partial credit for the imminent destruction of the recording industry, which roughly a century ago took over music and made it nearly impossible to earn a living as a musician. We can all be happy about the revenge that we are starting to enact.
Along the way, I found the explanation for why people don't grow out of music:
Mother: Son, what do you want to do when you grow up:
Son: I want to be a musician.
Mother: Well, son, you have a choice. You can grow up, or you can be a musician.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
> can you call a game 'good' if nobody plays it?
Good != POPULAR.
If *you* had fun playing a game, it was good. PERIOD.
I had a co-worker who played Evercrack. I couldn't stand the game, due to the mechanics. After wasting a few years playing it, he finally realized it wasn't a "good" game, due to it's game mechanics. I told him, "If you had fun playing it, it was a GOOD game [for you], else why did you enjoy playing it for so long?!"
IAAGP&D (I Am A Game Programmer and Designer)
I wouldn't mind picking up UT2k4 or something for a bit, but I know that I don't have time to play more than an hour or two a week. So as soon as I set foot on a server, BLAM, some 14 year old with nothing else to do all day is going to blow me away, and then hurl some kind of unintelligible racial slur at me.
So follow Gabe's advice and play with the bots. I'm having a ton of fun playing UT2k4 Onslaught with a bunch of robots.
... when she complains that the sex is boring, "stop asking where all the good times went", it's part of growing up.
Of course your 'wife' might just be that stack of sticky playboys under the bed, or have you grown out of them too?
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
I think, though, that I will always play videogames to some extent. My circle of friends and I discuss this occasionally. Do I think I'll be up till 3AM playing an FPS when I'm 40? No. But when I have my old buddies over to watch the superbowl or a barbeque, could a descendant of Super Smash Bros. make an appearance? I suspect the answer will be yes.
I also have a feeling that, should I have a son, playing videogames will be a great way to interact with him. My generation (or slightly before) will be the first one with any hope of relating to their kids in this way. Maybe I'm being naive, but I suspect videogames are here to stay, and that the industry is going to be stuck for quite a while with the same 3 spatial dimensions and 2.1 vectors for sensory input (sight, sound, lame rumbling).