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Former Gamers Want More Social Games
Gamasutra is running a series of studies on what people from certain demographics want from games. Their most recent article takes a look at former gamers, from the age of 25 to 35, and how they view their old hobby. Many seem to have replaced games with social networking during their non-productive time, and they also tend to favor games they can play with friends in the same room, rather than anonymous online interaction. Previous parts of the study focused on family gamers and older gamers.
"We had some of our test consoles rigged up to an internet connection to see how these Missing Gamers would respond to online play. But whilst they were initially impressed at the ability to play with other people all over the world, they soon picked up on the fact that many of the people they were playing with were either too good, or too immature to endure for any length of time. It wasn't long before the online games were abandoned in favor of the simpler split-screen local multiplayer offerings. The ability to nudge, rib, and cajole each other on the sofa (not to mention share snacks and drinks) was simply too much fun to resist."
I don't know about others but the kind of time I spend on social networking (compiling) is not well suited to being replaced with the kind of time I spend gaming (uninterupted). The gaming time lost now goes to spending time with children and a wife(yes, they do exist).
I've been playing since the Atari 2600 games. My favorite game? Battle tank, against my friend who owned the Atari. I've pretty much played every game type since then. But there are two trends I noticed in my gaming:
- time to game has gone down steadily.
- tolerance for internet asshattery has gone down as well.
- more and more people game.
The result? Gaming is now a social activity for me. My favorite moments are when my friends and I sit around a table and play some random WC3 mod or beat each other up in a game of VF5 or Halo. I still play single-player games, and I still play network games. But the #1 thing I look at in games is how well it will work with friends in the same room.
Do you hear that, Blizzard? No LAN play might look like a good idea, but you're completely ignoring the current social trends. It's indeed possible to play everything over the internet - but the fun factor of playing L33tH4x0r666 over my internet connection pales in comparison to the fun factor of beating my buddy in Halo. Or crushing them in Starcraft. If you truly want to make the best multiplayer experience, include LAN play. It's a must.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Some of us just want to play the games we grew up with(read: NES/SNES), not yet another dystopic space-marine FPS shootout using 20 buttons and 10 different joysticks PER CONTROLLER.
Even without multiplayer gaming, we can at get our 2-D nostalgic fix from games like Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night if we don't have an original NES or SNES with a shitload of games. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there are more of us out there who put gaming down around the time the original Playstation came out(well, except for Metal Gear Solid and the Final Fantasy series, heh).
Gaming in general isn't dead -- it just smells funny.
I used to spend a fair bit of time playing FPS (mostly Quake and UT) online. Shooting real, unpredictable people and having a bit of a rivalry is much more fun than taking it out on some lackluster AI.
I still play the same kind of games, but I haven't been online in years. Reason? The advent of voice integration. I don't mind playing against a bunch of immature 13 year olds, but I don't need to be continuously reminded of the fact by some snot-nosed momma's boy whining in my ear to stop circle strafing him. (Ok, that time it was funny.)
I know, you can turn off voice chat, but voice did help usher in a new era of team based games. I enjoy the extra strategy and team play of those, but you can't get by without the voice now. Even in an FPS, there's stuff going on on chat you need to know about.
If it all felt less like elementary school playground, I'd probably get into it again, at least occasionally.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
Mod parent up--I miss the days where gameplay trumped pretty graphics. Sure, what they can do with rendering and polygons and all the rest of it is amazing, but if the actual game is boring and uninspired, it won't hold my interest. Back in the day your characters, weapons, environment, etc was nothing but a handful of pixels, you had to use your imagination, and online gaming didn't exist. Therefore the primary competition between companies, the sole focus, was on the actual game premise. As a result, they rocked (well, mostly. ET for the Atari2600, I'm talking to you). Now there are so many other aspects that the designers' attention is divided, and the games themselves suffer. In a nutshell, the spell is broken.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
MMOs killed my favorite.. LAN gaming. We had an active group of LAN gamers that got together about every other month. We had about 50 or so people show up to game and talk smack and drink bawls. Then Evercrack, DAOC, and finally WoW whittled away the people that showed up. When the LANs finally died we had about 20 or so people, and about half of them would log into their MMO accounts.
One bright thing though, there is an annual LAN coming up next month, and since it is rare, there is less MMO bullshit going on.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Now there are so many other aspects that the designers' attention is divided, and the games themselves suffer. In a nutshell, the spell is broken.
I think it's more of an "EA Madden syndrome" type thing where there's so much money at stake that they have to stick with what sells. There's kind of a
You are a:
( ) Cyborg
( ) Ex Con
( ) Soldier
Fighting a:
( ) Evil corporation
( ) Alien mastermind
( ) Illuminati
( ) Zombies
At:
( ) Outer Space
( ) Post-holocaust
( ) Dystopia
( ) Ancient ruins
Kind of mentality to almost all action games. Too much of the above and not enough American McGee's Alice.
Or it could be that, as an adult, your expectations have changes? I've been gaming since the 2600 days as well. You seriously need to go back and play some old games on emulators. Games that had me mesmerized for dozens or hundreds of hours have a hard time holding my attention for 15 minutes nowadays. You also forget that the ratio of brilliant-to-crap was about the same (ET was just the most exceptional crap).
The astoundingly powerful hardware we have simply opens up possibilities. Yes, you have the AAA titles that are expected to push graphical boundaries, but there are lots of titles that are all about the gameplay. I'll use myself as an example - in the past week, I've played three games on my Xbox that I can recall: Oblivion (playing through the expansions), N+, and Puzzle Quest. But the great thing is, now we have a *choice* of games. I occasionally enjoy a purely visceral experience. Do you think Dead Space would be as scary without the amazing graphics and audio? Other times, I hook up with friends for multiplayer N+. Other times, I just feel like relaxing with a slow-paced game of Puzzle Quest.
I think you can find plenty of examples of fantastic gameplay that matches or exceeds anything the past can dole out. You need to take off the rose-colored glasses.
I'll get off your lawn now.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.