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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).
"they also tend to favor games they can play with friends in the same room"
So, that's sex then.
Explains the missing gamers.
Next...
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Or maybe boardgames.
Yeah yeah, get off of my lawn!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Split-screen multiplayer ain't so fucking great when you don't have any friends.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm not suprised by this study, in fact, I believe I may be a classic example of why this may be. I have a gaming PC, xbox, ps2, gamecube, n64, NES... but most importantly I have a Wii. Me and my fiance primarily play this together (Mario Kart online) or whenever we have company (Karaoke, DDR, etc). But I also have a secret life that my girlfriend doesn't know about - I play EVE Online with a few HS buddies that she has never met. We are states apart and grew completely different apart (one is getting his doctorate in physics, the other is getting by on his HS diploma) but this is the one thing that keeps us socializing.
I wish I had more time to play games like WoW but I honestly don't anymore. I wish I even had time to talk on AIM anymore, but it seems as if those days are over. So before when my gaming time was an introvert activity, its now more of a social event where I can catch up with my friends while getting my video game fix.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
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.
I have FUN playing with friends (whether locally (preferably) or over the internet (with skype)). With random internet players, it becomes more of a competition. I prefer the fun.
Also, for games that don't lend themselves to competitive play, co-op (again, with friends) is awesome. It's a pity that so few games support it these days, but generally the good ones eventually get co-op play mods (e.g. synergy for HL2).
Btw: I passed up the opportunity to use mod points on sex games jokes to post this.
OK, you want social interaction, we'll give you social interaction.
The big time-sink games, like Everquest and WoW, where it's necessary to get everybody on line at the same time for a raid, could be made even more intrusive with a mobile aspect. If someone raids your fortress, frantic messages go out to all the defenders phones, demanding that they get on line immediately and help with the defense.
When you really want to annoy another guild, raid them at 4 AM.
This would probably sell in Singapore.
I have to agree. But even more, I would like to see more cooperative multiplayer in games. So many games have a primary "campaign" mode, the standard game itself with all the effort in large scale maps and objectives and such, but when it comes time for the multiplayer option, it a purely competitive arena style thing, where large differences in skill/familiarity with the game ruin the fun for the noob that gets incessantly poned or for the expert that cant get anyone to play out of past frustration. Some games have accomplished this very well (Halo, Gears of War to name a few), but I haven't seen it much outside of the First Person Shooter genre.
What I wouldn't give for a truly cooperative Real Time Strategy game. And not just a basic alliance, which usually just means a non-aggression and map-sharing pact. But imagine for a moment full resource and control sharing. At that point you can differentiate roles and responsibilities. One person to manage resource and production while the other leads the military defense/expansion. Imagine Spore Space Stage if you could have one empire, with one player as the Minister of War, another as Minister of Commerce, and a third as Minister of Colonization. Or even a good military type, but were you can organize a hierarchical military system, with your infantry, munitions, and strike team special forces. The complexity players have achieved in tactics of WoW raiding or Call of Duty, etc. prove that given the freedom to do so, players will plan, cooperate and organize well beyond what you may anticipate.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
I'm not a "former" gamer, but better than 95% of my gaming time is in single-player games or in multiplayer with people in the same room (Smash Brothers, Wii Sports, things like that).
The only time I play online with strangers is when I've also got at least one friend in the game, which doesn't happen too often (most of my friends have the same gaming patterns as me and prefer living-room multiplayer, playing a single player game together, or just playing alone to playing online).
I get much more enjoyment out of a marathon playthrough of a single-player game, switching off with a friend, than I do playing an online FPS or whatever with said friend. My wife loves JRPGs, so we usually play those together, even though they're single player. Done similar things with a couple of the Zelda games, and with some 3rd-person games.
The rest of the time (the majority of it) I play PC-RPGs (single player--I *hate* that this market is so small, since it's produced some of my favorite games), strategy games (currently enjoying Hearts of Iron 2), and single-player atmospheric or story-heavy FPS games like the Half Life series, Deus Ex (I replay it every year or so, took me several playthroughs over a few years before I finally felt like I'd experienced the entire game), Portal, the Thief series, Bioshock, etc.
They mean games that gamers can play. That pretty much eliminates sex as an option.
Why should I tolerate the abusive behavior of some pimpled 13-year-old virgin online when I can have a good time playing with someone I genuinely like?
The behavior in persistent worlds will only improve when they begin to impose cash fines for obnoxiousness on players' credit cards, doubling in amount with each incident. Failure to pay (i.e. card declined) locks up the account.
I piss off bigots.
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.
Back in the day, video games were pretty much a staple of any party we threw. While people would hang out and talk and drink and whatever, we'd also usually have some kind of game-playing going on. most of the time it was fighting games in tournament mode and people loved it.
I've played games for over 30 years. I'm just tired of games that are now made so frustrating. They aren't fun anymore.
If a games seems a little short, the developers must make it insanely difficult to beat.
I have put many games aside and never finished them because of this.
And another thing... Many new games are developed for console, so I find the controls to be dismal when trying to play on the PC. I'm much more used to having many controls than using the same buttons for 3 or more different actions based on context.
I've been weaning myself off it - hence my posting as AC. I "lost" my login and email so that I'm not wasting so much time here on Slashdot,
Obviously your devious plan has been very successful.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
My point? Nothing, and I mean nothing, beats face to face.
I dunno, doggy style is pretty awesome.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I used to be an avid Quake player, but I had the most fun playing it on the LAN with my daughters (and occasionally friends).
The youngest now manages a GameStop.
I used to run a fairly popular Quake site, now that the kids are grown and I'm divorced I spend most of my free time in bars chasing women.
Free Martian Whores!
I spend way more time playing split screen games with my brother (roomate) than I do on online games or single player games combined.
Its hard to find good coop games, as 1v1 gets old really quick. The team games like Halo and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 capture our attention for much longer.
I have no desire to be tea bagged online by a preteen.
So you are saying Quake is like a gateway drug, leading to such unsavory professions as Gamestop employee? Dear me, I'm glad Jack Thompson is disbarred, he would have had a field day....
Actually her favorite was Jazz Jackrabbit, which she played online before I let her play Quake.
But I think the gateway drug was "Dad". I played guiter to them when they were little, and changed the words to some songs to make them personal. She's majoring in music in college and has musical notation tattoos (which I heartily disaproved of).
Her fiancee is into gaming as well.
Jack Thompson is quoted on uncyclopedia's entry on black holes: "the only things that suck more than I do".
Interestingly, I just noticed your user name, the kids' favorite song was "Sweet Child of Mine"; I played it soft, in a different key, and changed the words around to fit them.
Free Martian Whores!
Since I game online with my RL friends, mostly in MMOs, I have combined social aspects of gaming with the gaming itself. I have in fact given up regular games entirely in favour of MMOs for the past 5 years or so. I prefer that environment overall, and since I don't do consoles the social gaming aspect of having my friends over to play is non-existent. We play our MMOs online then meet for food or coffee etc later on every once in a while.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
This is a very debatable subject and it varies with the game mechanics and the foresight of the designers. There are many games that get ruined by scamming and ksing, but there are many games that have very altruistic guilds set up. I remember in diablo 2, after I became well equipped on 2 characters, I set out to start a clan that helped out noobs. Eventually, we had a large group of people that had a lot of fun together. We would have the decently equiped lite sorcs do normal and nightmare rushes for many people, and the hammerdins would do hell and get hellforge. The runes would help the noobs a bit, and some of the rushed accounts were made into common accounts that any guild member could use. We only got a few well equipped, and only high ranking members could use those. But it was fun for the noobs to instantly try out a new build with decent equipment without having to build one up alone. Only a few accounts got stolen (there will always be a greedy person), but not so much was lost that we utterly lost trust. We even had inter-clan duels with mid level naked characters for fun. We did a bunch of clan tournaments and events that greatly enhanced the experience of the game to a point that no one could really do alone. Has anyone who played d2 ever done cow level and other quests with 8 summon necros? I only lagged out once and another member lagged out twice, but it was still VERY fun. Another fun event was naked cowing with 8 fire druids. The d-torches made for SOOOO much fire it was hilarious (we had mercs with infinity).
Help fight spam
There are lots of games on that platform that I called "party games" before someone else coined the name "social games." By my definition, a party game has short play times between controller turnovers, are easy to learn and hard to master, and allow even the people who aren't playing to feel involved, usually by capping on how awful someone was at the game.
Soul Caliber was a great example of the 'hotseat' party game; only two people at a time could play but the rounds were quick and it was easy to hand the controller to someone else after you lost. I'm sure the same could be said of other fighting games but I never liked any other fighter as much as Soul Caliber, not even the SC sequels with their impossible balloon tits.
The various Wii sports titles take that fun aspect and moves it beyond the realm of traditional gaming genres, no robots and zombies and T&A. My mom tried out the Wii and it's the first system she's liked since the Odyssey. A system like this has huge, huge multi-generational appeal. Personally, I get a little bored with the Wii Sports games but I also don't like Microsoft Solitaire and that's the most popular Windows game ever so you can see why I don't trust my own opinion on such matters. :)
I see they've ported the old TMNT arcade game to the 360 and I assume they've included four controller support. That's another game that would kill at parties. There's also a Gauntlet port I see, one of the original four-players in the arcades. Pair that up with the big-screen TV's, party gaming can't help but to take off.
It's kind of funny, the basics of racing games haven't changed all that much since Pole Position: try to go fast, stay on the track, don't crash. But the graphics between then and now, heh! Amazing how much things have changed, the games look a thousand times better but it's still the same mechanics -- go fast, try not to crash.
These party games will go the same way, trying to present classic play mechanics in new and interesting ways. The motion controller was a genius move since many people find moving something around in the air more intuitive than pushing a joystick around, especially on today's fancy controllers.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
LAN parties?
Party Games?
Nothing wrong with videogames as a social hobby, it just requires either LAN play (co-op in particular is most awesome with other people right next to you, and the best gaming experiences I've ever had have been with ten friends in team vs games like COD. We auto-team balance, because everyone likes to have fun, teams can communicate well (voice chatter is very easy when you can, you know, just talk to the person), and the combination of co-operation and competition is one of the most satisfying experiences I know. It's like playing paintball, except there are a wider range of games and styles, the weather is irrelevant, there's less risk of injury, and of course, we are all looking at a screen. That said it costs about the same, takes about as much time, both to get a good party going and to stay in practice in between, and it even can encourage the same sort of bonding among those who consistently play together.
Internet play offers almost none of this, but it's easy.
Many new games are developed for console, so I find the controls to be dismal when trying to play on the PC. I'm much more used to having many controls than using the same buttons for 3 or more different actions based on context.
Then I guess you'll absolutely hate these games that use one button ;-)
But I can't stand it when in an MMO a total stranger uses foul language. It's impolite and what's most irritating is that they do it casually. I wasn't raised like that.
This is why I'm so excited about LittleBigPlanet. While you can party it up online, you can play levels alone or with 2, 3 or 4 players on one screen (no splitting necessary), and it's tons of fun.
LAN parties?
Party Games?
Nothing wrong with videogames as a social hobby, it just requires either LAN play
I may be showing my age here, so I'll post anonymously, but have you heard of this archaic institution called an 'Arcade'?
And I'm not talking about the watered-down 'room with a couple of games in it' stuck in the back room of a pizza joint, where the only games they have are either broken or some variation of DDR. I'm talking about a real-life honest-to-goodness big ol' establishment full of games and people to play them.
Places where you could get some snacks, some beverages (alcoholic, even, in some places) and play games against actual people standing right next to you. There is absolutely nothing that can compare to the adrenaline rush you get by going toe-to-toe with some guy you've never met before and being so evenly matched that the game comes down to the last few pixels of health and it could go either way in the last few seconds. When you've gotten an enthusiastic crowd gathered around you cheering both of you on while you frantically try to not lose your grip on the joystick due to your ever-sweatier palms.
That's real social gaming and that's what consoles connected to the Internet and PC gaming have all but killed off. It's a sad realization that future gamers won't know the kinds of thrills that come from beating a skilled opponent or how to lose graciously (or win, for that matter) because the guy you're playing against isn't some faceless voice on the other end of an Internet connection, but an actual person standing inches from you who is fully capable of kicking your ass if you gloat too much.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think there are some kids on my lawn that I need to take care of.
Most guilds, IMHO, suffer from "High School Syndrome." You join up, get ranked according to personal feelings, or get "forced" into cliques because you don't play enough or do special favors for people. You are berated for not logging in enough (by some) and are kicked for not logging into some forum regularly or don't want to comply by some arbitrary rules. I'm also under the belief that guilds are killing MMOs be artificially segregating the communities and making player comfortable by allowing them to slough off grouping with other players because they have their elitist/normal/comfortable group.
Personally, I play games for the mechanics and the environment. I love MMOs that are huge worlds with complex/diverse classes. MMOs that offer economies that you don't have in single player games, dungeon crawls and adventure of never knowing what's around the next corner. Today's MMOs have lost a lot of that for me. Most of the dungeons/regions/worlds are cookie cutter, bland, and uninspired. Most of the time, the games are built around the guilds that want everyone to be able to drop what they are doing and fly across the world in 5 minutes. That sucks some of the adventure out... don't you think?
As far as mechanics are concerned, let me build up my character from the same core everyone else starts with using skills and requirements like Oblivion and Dungeon Keeper did... but with more complexity. I want to start off as a normal fair Dark Elf and pick up two handed swords, medium armor and fireball skills. I don't want to follow the preset tree and preset quests from zero to max level just to have to join a guild and raid or PVP. I want the progression from zero to max to be interesting, not required.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
You laugh, but some of the most fun I've had this year was getting together with two of my friends for some late weekend dice rolling through a cardboard dungeon full of giant molded creatures.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
From what I've seen, people enjoy gmes of all sorts at any age. There is a group called The Older Gamers at http://www.theoldergamers.com/ that specifically cater to people who play games (online and otherwise) who are over the age of 25. You have 30 year olds playing MMOs, and 70 year olds playing FPS, so I don't think you can profile players and the types of games they play by their age.
For the vast majority of these people, their social networking is done via the games themselves or in the forums that discuss the games they play, or general ones. The only commonality is that they play computer games of some sort. And it's massive now, internationally, given how far it's come since it started in 2002 in a little corner of Australia.
So I'll dispute their claim that people give up games for social networking sites as they get older; they tend to be social with other gamers!
I intend to live forever, or die trying. - Groucho Marx
Co-op games are my favorites. I'm not a huge fan of Halo, for example-- but it's one of the few games I can get online and play with (not against!) geographically scattered friends. So I play it all the freaking time.
I've got enough splitscreen multiplayer games-- what I really want now is more co-op, and more online features that make online gaming with friends feel like local multiplayer. Video chat with a window in the corner, easy transitions from speaking with friends to speaking with other players, and more games where we aren't competing with our buddies. Even among friends, skill levels and differing practice make local multiplayer awkward-- nobody likes getting crushed all the time, and nobody likes not having any challenge. Put everybody on the same side, though, and it becomes a lot more fun as you work together to crush the zombie hordes, and chat and catch up on things with friends the same way you did when you were 10.
Those of us who spend 8-10 hours working in front of a terminal every day pointing and clicking under deadline pressure don't want to go home and do more of the same. And that describes the jobs of a lot of 25-35 year olds, myself included.
If you're between 25 and 35, you've been around long enough to have played a countless amount of first person shooters, fighting games, racing games, MMOs, sidescrollers, and more. Honestly, there are very few new ideas, so it's harder to get into things. We're still playing the same core gameplay of those genres. They're well-established now.
Kids are into it all because, to them, it's new. Twilight Princess will seem pretty amazing and innovative if you never played Ocarina of Time ten years earlier. Halo multiplayer must seem revolutionary if you weren't around doing the same thing in a trash-talking Quake clan in 1996. StarCraft II will be totally awesome if you hadn't already played StarCraft 1, WarCraft 1 and 2, C&C, and so on.
Incidentally, I miss the old PC Gamer CDs where you could get about 20-30 shareware games, almost all of them coming from different genres. It was a cool time to be a gamer. I feel burned out every time I play yet another first person shooter. I've done all this before!
Whoops, I meant games. But seriously... I have absolutely no interest in social games. And I'm a former gamer. So score one for the opposing team.
"Ruin gameplay because of OTHER PEOPLE."
Get out of here! Not everyone has tonnes of game playing friends close to them. Tonnes of gamers have friends that do not play games at all or think they are lame "omg video games, you loser!". That sentiment is still around. Not only that but many gamers who have good friends are often on the move because of their jobs and online gaming is a godsend for that. Speak for yourself only please. Online gaming > no social gaming at all.
Not only that but online games trump your friends(tm) in other ways, most peoples friends absolutely suck at games and the skill levels between them and there friends are usually disproportionate. This idea that "it's better with friends on my couch" is ok some of the time, but most of us enjoy both and get tired of both at different times.... I have no idea what I'd do without online gaming to challenge me in many games, since I am so good I hand most people their ass that it's not fun for me or them. Therefore I do mostly social / wii'ish kind of games with others if the skill is way too skewed.
I look at gaming as a waste of time and potentially addicting. I;m not much into gaming now but the wii fit looks cool would like to try that
Please excuse me for cross posting, but I just posted this on the "30 yr anniversary of MUDs" story, plus I made some relevant changes:
Modern day MMORPGs owe an awful lot to MUDs and MOOs. Often because you don't need as much imagination, a MMORPG like WoW is pretty disappointing (to my minds and similar freinds in my age group - 40-50yo).
In fact I'm yet to find a game that has the immersion level of those early MUDs, but maybe that's because I was younger then. There's a lot more competition for my time with a house/wife/kids/job etc than when I started playing computer games seriously in the early 80s (Ultima comes to mind and Defender on the Apple II).
These days something has to be very impressive to get me interested and pretty much all modern games fail in that. I've have enjoyed Assassin's Creed recently but aside from Counterstrike after work around christmas times, to my mind, none are sufficiently open ended and diverse to replace those older games. Remember we're the old fogies who played AD&D with pencil and paper and you had the imagien the entire scene/game in your head except for a few stats written down.
It seems modern games have gone down a particular direction and left a massive field of gaming/socialising open which has been filled only partially and from time to time by things like CuSeeMe, or IRC or SMS txting, ICQ etc but then each of these specialises and as the world's communities unite more and more vistas (opportunities) open up that are not being addressed.
I think there's a lot of scope for imagination based gaming with high social networking and dynamic (or on the fly) content creation that just doesn't exist at all today. Combine this with almost permanent availability (phones), GPS and the HUDs (heads up displays) that we don't have yet and I suspect there's significant new genres of games to come that will redress some of the things we've missed since those very early days of gaming.
There's considerable scope for new genres of games, such as audio only or on-the-fly player generated content. That's how the old AD&D was and no games get close to that - I'm yet to find a game where the stories/adventure is created by the players and the world is created just a step in front of you. Those old games and their stories outlast every level of every game I've ever played and hence had the biggest impact. Do you remember with relish a level of a game you've played and retell the story with laughter and the warm camerarderie of your old friends?? Well maybe there was a scene from LeisureSuit Larry or SpaceQuest III, or Ootopos but wait...they're all very old games. I do see young kids excited about relating stuff that happened in Halo with their friends and sharing it on YouTube, so maybe I just don't get it. I don't hear my kids (who play a lot of Wow) relate stories on WoW conquests or adventures or things that happened in Quake[1-3,Wars] or Unreal or BaldursGate.
On the other hand, maybe kids todays are just as excited, captivated and immersed by the latest version of Crysis, WoW, Bioshock, SMS txting, MSN or whatever - somehow I don't see it. My kids aren't as impressed, enthralled or excited about games as I (and my friends) were, I'm sure of it. It's a bit like when William Gibson said he wrote Neuromancer on an old mechanical typewriter and then later got an AppleII and realised how primitive computers actually were. He said if he'd known computers were that crappy he never could have written about advanced cybertech in the visionary way that he did. In the same way I think today's familiarity with computers limit kids' imaginations.
It's more than that though. Kids attention span in general is shorter. I remember not that long ago when many European versions of games were different and longer than US versions because if the game was too long or hard it didn't sell as well in the US. Generally the US is ahead of the curve and that shortening of attention span has filtered out and down today. I watched my kids playing Age of Wonder
pithy comment
What I wouldn't give for a truly cooperative Real Time Strategy game. And not just a basic alliance, which usually just means a non-aggression and map-sharing pact. But imagine for a moment full resource and control sharing. At that point you can differentiate roles and responsibilities. One person to manage resource and production while the other leads the ...expansion. ... The complexity players have achieved in tactics prove that given the freedom to do so, players will plan, cooperate and organize well beyond what you may anticipate.
s/players/workers/ . It already exists -- it's called, er, Work World. Takes forever to level, though -- and talk about *grinding*! 8^P Nobody really wants to play, though: they actually have to pay the 'players' to get them to show up (although at some 4500 Lindens/ hour it's more lucrative than camping). The avatars are pretty lame, though -- very little customization allowed (no furries for example). And the 'players' have to be there -- in meatspace, no less -- 5 days a week. I'd say that, as a MMORG, it's pretty unsustainable...
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
This exists already. I forget what game though :( I think someone mentioned age of empires... I think another game has it as well, I remember this game style existing for RTS games out there.
Seriously.
Some of the best times I've had this past year have been playing Zombies!!!, Risk, or Settlers of Catan.
If I do play computer/console games now, it's usually with other people -- either split screen or LAN.
I still do play games in my own spare time, but how much time they get fluctuates quite a lot. It's definitely not as much as it used to be when I was younger.
I find social networking a chore. I would much rather fire up a single-player game than tool around on Facebook. I really don't want to know that much about my friends, I'd rather spend time in person with them than rummage through their Facebook pages.
Gaming for me is an escape from the social activities of the day. I am very fortunate that my wife and I have the same taste in games (we were in a TFC clan together, a WoW guild and both enjoy RPGs and strategy games) so we have some common ground and can talk about the game we're both playing. I also play with my kids in the room, although I had to stop playing Half-Life 2 with my daughter sitting on my knee once I got to Ravenholm. Gaming time is escape time, but not cut-myself-off-from-the-family time.
I definitely can't put the same time into it that I used to, though. My family is why we quit WoW.
I don't view gaming time as social time (not even in WoW) because I am not interested in interacting with total strangers who shout or text obscene and idiotic comments at me.
I am 32 and have been playing games since I was 6.