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Have I Lost My Gaming Mojo?
danabnormal writes "Increasingly I'm being frustrated in my attempts to find a game I want to play. In an effort to catch up, I've been using my bog standard Dell laptop to dig out treasures I have missed, such as American McGee's Alice, Grim Fandango and Syberia. I don't often get the time to play games, so I like to have the opportunity to dip in and out of a title without feeling like I'm losing something by not playing it for periods of time. But when I find a title I like, I make the time. Heavy Rain is the last game that gripped me, that truly engaged me and made me want to complete it in a single sitting. I'm tired of the GTA formulas, bored of CoDs and don't have the reaction time to think on my feet for AOE III. Is it about time I tossed in the controller and resigned myself to the fact that the games I want only come out once in a blue moon? Or have I just not found that one great title that will open me up to a brand new genre? Lords of Ultima is going OK at the moment — is there anything of that ilk I've missed? What are your thoughts? Do you stick to a particular genre? Are you finding it harder, as you get more mature, to find something you want to play?"
It's all kinds of fun. Kind of virtual lego with some friends. Mount and blade: Warband is fun a good bit different. I don't think I find it harder to like games, instead I suspect the new games are of poorer quality with a lot of dumbing down going on and the games being buggy and unfinished.
Have you checked out Auditorium? It just came out on the PlayStation store for PS3..
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
As a student of game design, AAA console titles are generally designed to be conservative in gameplay and copy what's out there, polish it a bit, and sell it with new art. Now, that's not even close to being ALL of what's out there, but if GTA IV, CoD, and Mass Effect 2 aren't your cup of tea (and you do enjoy Heavy Rain) then the big-advertising-budget titles will likely never appeal to you in the way it sounds you want them to.
If you're willing to buy a game without a proven track record, look at the indie scene (Steam has a good starting selection) and some of the other great titles that have been passed over like Beyond Good and Evil or Psychonauts. They're usually more Grim Fandango or Alice than the bigger games, and you might like them more.
I am become
Cave Story immediately comes to mind. It's worth a look, if you're into old-school platformers.
There are lots of them available. The 2010 IF competition just finished, so there are a bunch of (free!) games of varying quality levels, genres, etc available.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Games are not so important for adults. The biggest use for games is learning how to learn fast. Maybe you have that down now and your subconsiously just not as interested.
Go make and raise some kids and let them learn some games. That is a fun, rewarding, and quite complex game. All stages of it.
Yeah... yeah.
Well FUCK THAT, I will still be playing games as much when I am 60 as now that I am 30.
If you can't find something fun, look harder or GTFO.
Now get off my lawn.
...
It's time to accept that the nearest you'll come to the thrill of a head shot, is a riveting game of cribbage with the ladies.
I'd ask you to be my bridge partner but it sounds like your reaction times are really sub par.
Be thankful for the cribbage nights. In another ten years when it takes all you can muster to punch A4 on the bingo card, you'll look back fondly on these times.
What's this I hear?
What wondrous thing?
Is this the Defcon klaxon's ring?
A flashing light...
Above the doooor! There's just one thing it could mean...
War!
Oh, what is it good for? (What is it good for?)
It's good for you, (Good for you!) It's good for me!
Ohh, War!
What is it good for? (What is it good for?) Oh, it strengthens the economy!
It shows the world that we've got stones! (We've got stones!)
And carriers... with fighter drones! (Vo doh dee oh!)
War! Oh, what is it good for? (What is it good for?)
It's good for you it's good for me!
(It's the cat's meow!)
(Vo doh dee oh!)
Heeeere we go!
(Hyah! Woo! Wooo-hoo! Yeah! Ohhh yeah!)
War!
Oh, what is it good for? (What is it good for?)
It's good for you! (Doo waka doo waka doo waka doo waka doo!) It's good for me!
Oh, war! Oh, what is it good for? (What is it good for?)
Ohhh, it strengthens the economy!
A lengthy battle's an incumbent's dream! (Ohhh ohhh ohhh ohhh!)
Because you can't change horses... In mid stream!
For bombs (Boom!)
And guns (Bang!)
And so much more (Napalm!)
We celebrate the joys of war war war!
For bombs and guns, and so much more...
We celebrate the joys of war!
From Sam & Max, Season 1, Episode 4 (a video game, you insensitive clod)
I really got into Borderlands... great base game, with three out of four great DLCs (the third one being the high point). Great game play, LOTS of replayability (I've been playing it non-stop for a year), and a wicked sense of humor. And multiplayer is a blast if you have any friends to play it with.
I also really liked the original Fallout 3. Fallout New Vegas isn't really grabbing me though.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Are you finding it harder, as you get more mature, to find something you want to play?
I have no problem finding interesting games, but I do find it harder to put up with bad ones. The more frustrating thing is that a lot of the games coming to PC now are actually designed and tested for consoles, which results in (at best) stupid UI design, and (at worst) major instability.
Lately I've been finding competitive games to be more fun if it involves more than just personal skill, so I've been gravitating toward co-op multiplayer games. Here are two free games on Steam that are great:
I've also been going back to play Neverwinter Nights, which has so many good 3rd party modules that I could be kept busy for years. It has multiplayer too, if you can find friends to play it with.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed had a good story and fantastic gameplay -- the spiritual successor to Jedi Academy.
Dark Void was fun but really short. The jet pack works for some great gameplay and the story is decent. If you can get it cheap, I highly recommend it. Also probably the best video game score I've ever heard, done by Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McCreary.
Prototype is like GTA meets God of War -- most games start your character off weak at 1 and get you to 10 when you're 80% through the game. Prototype starts you at 11 and somehow keeps getting better, so you never feel short of awesome. The only game to let you glide down to a street, snatch someone up, and run up the side of a building to eat them like some sort of zombie king kong.
Borderlands is fun if you like to mix in a little RPG with your FPS. Get four friends and go at it. Requires some discipline to ensure you don't level past each-other when you don't play together.
I certainly don't play games the way that I used to -- I own and operate two businesses -- but I've managed to find many games to keep me playing an average of 10 hours per week, and it's fun.
Truth is, I dropped all of the games that simulate real work. Big surprise, I have a full-time job. It's unfortunatel because I really used to like the Master of Orion series, and number three was fantastic. But running a galactic empire easily plays 40 hours per week, and has you thinking about it all the time, and that's no longer entertainment for me.
But there are way more genres now than ever before, and some have evolved quite nicely. So here's what I've done.
Used to love the old Sierra adventure games. Now, it's the new Tales of Monkey Island -- the 5 episode thing from last year. Plays the same, but modern story and modern humour.
Never liked racing games. I bought a sports car last year. Played GRID. Had lots of fun. So much fun, that I took my car to a track -- Watkins Glen. Turns out that real-life race tracks are 100% reproduced in today's racing games. Right down to the advertisements. Really quite something. Felt awesome in the real thing in part because of the game thing.
Left4Dead, 1&2, do a great job as playing like a sports team. It's tough to organize a game of football in the park. Easy to organize a game of shooting zombies in steam. The tactics and communication work the same way, so it's fun in that way.
I'm looking forward to the new DeusEx in February. I loved the story in the first one.
In the end, the truth is that there are just so many many games these days, there's plainly going to me a huge number that you won't like. But you can bet that an industry that big is going to have something for you. It's just that big of an industry, and it's dedicated to giving you a good time. But you'll have to spend some time searching. Really. And if you're looking at anything first-person, you're going to have to get used to the modern-day controls of whatever platform you choose. They're different than they were ten years ago -- in every way.
But yeah, if you want to enjoy playing games, and you put in some effort to find those games, you will like them. Remember, some games take over 70 million dollars to create. I promise they do it all for you. But if you don't want to, then it'll be an acquired taste that you'll never acquire.
These days, I'm trying to acquire a taste for Scotch. Don't look up the game, I mean the drink. I've mixed in with amaretto -- something that I simply cannot live without (nor spell consistently) -- and Scotch is still tough to drink. But I want to like it, and I'm on my way. Last you it was french onion soup. This year, it's-a-gonna-be-Scotch.
Oh, I know, but I was trying to be motivational. If I was replying to BadAnalogyGal, I would have said: "Real women play go."
Game studios have become corporations. Middle managers are the people who decide upon form of their games nowadays. They are run-of-the-mill, with little variation. Finding something new and refreshing from big studios is an exercise in futility. Just don't. Wait 5 years and nowadays' games that are fondly remembered then will be the ones worth playing.
Meanwhile, load up Steam Shop and click the "Indie" tab. Not all of these games are worthwhile. But about half of them is. That's where real innovation is nowadays. Where new brave concepts are explored. Sure about half of these concepts is failed. But still, considering the prices, you're better off financially buying 3 Indie games (and enjoying one) than buying one blockbuster (and finding it boring).
Look for games made in Russia. Some amazing artistic enterprises have been undertaken. Some extremely ambitious projects - very realistic flight simulators for example. Ignore flashy commercials for EA, Ubisoft, Activision. Go for the little-known stuff and you'll find where the good games are at.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I turned 66 last Saturday, and I'm still addicted to small games from years ago. Any Zelda older than Minish Cap was fine with me, especially OoT, and I went on a Castlevania tear for while. My favorite is still Star Ocean: Blue Sphere, which requires a modicum of Japanese and a GBC. I confess to playing the Professor Layton series more than once -- lost mojo is an advantage here, because I don't remember the solutions to some of the harder puzzles from two years ago and have to work them out again the hard way. I'm not a fan of most of the Final Fantasy franchise, but still replay 1, 2, 9 and 12. FF13 was an excrutiating disappointment, but in the last chapter there are only three bosses -- the first is easy, the second is either beyond my frayed reflexes or requires more levelling up (a colossal bore at this stage). My current game of choice is GTA Chinatown Wars, which is kind of a mini-mayhem doodle machine (you don't have to follow the main story line), and sort of fun if you rinse out your abused sense of morals once in a while. I don't know about "good" games -- seems a bit subjective to me. But I have no doubt one of the big franchises will uncork a great game again sometime soon. We seem to be living in a magical moment in the development of the Arts -- like Toulouse Lautrec, or Van Gogh, when the great souls are among us, unnoticed by the mainstream.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
try some "old" games you haven't yet finished. the lifespan of a game decides how timeless it really is.
in terms of gameplay, the games haven't really gone much further at all in the past decade, and graphics on artistic/functional level have stayed the same as well.
vampire the masquerade: bloodlines, morrowind, deus ex, X(and sequels) and so on, many of them have texture packs and mods available to make it a bit more fresh and also you can play them at high resolutions with antialiasing, modern look with many game studios is to just blur everything with fake focal blur(makes everything look like a cheap sitcom and not a movie.. if you catch my drift). you could even try ascending in nethack.
of course, you could look into making your own and replaying some old and new games with that in mind, you might be amazed with how little original thought or actual content variety some games that ship on two dvd's have. I've been playing mass effect 1 and 2 lately, they suck in many, many aspects(gameplay is VERY repetitive, controls were made worse in 2 etc etc), it's a bit boring when you can guess beforehand where/when enemies will be spawned(just noticing that they're spawned in waves to make it easier on the engine sucks enough, also there's no adventure in m.e, despite having a galaxy to explore, but whats the fun when the galaxy is smaller than your hometown.. and what fun is flying a space ship when it's just a menu. gameplaywise some bbs door games had as much galaxy exploring).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I suspect your tastes have just matured. There might be other, more complex games you enjoy more. In college I thought JRPGs were great and had little time for anything else. These days, I can't spend 90 hours crawling through dungeons, and much to my surprise find that I just get frustrated when I try to play JRPGs. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate games anymore, it just meant that I have to say "okay, I'm only going to play the best ranked games on metacritic."
I just played Mass Effect 2 (a single-player RPG) in easy mode, just for the storyline. I'm sure some will disagree with me, but the storyline and presentation just blew me away. While the plot can be cheesy at times, it's amazingly well done, and, in easy mode, it can almost feel like a movie with limited interaction. During some of the end game sequences, you're blasting away with the same feel and urgency (but not plot, of course) as the movie, Aliens 2. However, the game is short (I finished in less than 35 hours in easy mode), and fairly linear -- while most missions can be done in any order, gameplay is linear once inside a mission.
Here's a trailer for it:
(Yeah, it's really is that good -- most of the trailer was made from excerpts from the actual in-game videos.)
In fact, 'go's impermeability to computerized victory is attributed more to a lack of computational power. Make a game small enough and min/max trees will make it impossible to win against the computer.
Absolutely not. A min/max tree as a primary method of strategy is a primitive brute force hack approach to game theory. We humans don't nearly rely as much on computational brute force because we simply don't have the capacity for it (mostly because our brain's short term memory has a very high write latency). The fact that one trick pony computer programs are quite successful in chess is the exact reason why I find it less stimulating: it mostly just requires a lot of 'looking ahead'. Go, on the other hand, requires a player to combine that skill with keen pattern recognition abilities and showcases how a combination of diverse skills ability enables a very long lurning curve (the difference between a high kyuu and a high dan in Go is truly a marvel). The go tree branches so quickly that no Moore's law in the foreseeable future is going to be of much help, without developing more intelligent AI / game theory, in particular (probabilistic) pattern recognition. So yes, the state of computer theory and the intellectual depth of a game are very much related, I believe.
The most engaging game I've played recently is Portal. Unique, and fresh. Looking forward to Portal 2.
Let me just point out that there is something ironic in your opening statements.
Agreed. I'm 51 and have been playing video games since the grandady of them all "Pong" appeared next to the pinball machines in the local bowling alley. I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. Games are like movies and books, maximum of one or two genuine classics per year, the rest are either good variations of an existing classic or just rubbish.
As to the question posed in the summary; I find games with a simple interface and rules are the best ones to leave and come back to later. I have been playing the popular flash game "gemcraft - chapter 0" since the start of the year, I keep coming back in the hope of finishing the last few feindishly frustrating levels.
OTOH if the poster genuinely cannot find anything to play he could do what my 77yo dad did and find enjoyment from learning to write his own games.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
And the poppy is also a flower.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I think the drive to "have a storyline" is what's killing games, by turning them into movies. What was the storyline of Asteroids or Pac-Man?
The problem with modern games is that the gameplay is exactly the same across many many titles. Most FPSs have pretty much the same gameplay. The breakout indie successes are almost always about gameplay, not storyline.
... being in my late thirties and having been gaming since I was 15.
As far as I can tell, it's a mix of:
Because I actually like RPGs and like to explore "a large world" in games, at the moment I am providing for my gaming needs with MMORPGs, since they have huge amounts of content and a reasonable price. I stick with the no-grind-required ones, explore the content until I get bored and then move to another one. They tend to be fun even in just 1 or 2 hour sessions and are in fact great value for money.
At the moment it's WoW (huge world, nowhere as grindy now as 4 years ago, new expansion coming next month) and before that it was Lord of the Rings Online (now free to play, beautifull world, lots of story, adult mature players, highly recomended).
It's probably not so much that you've lost your "mojo" as your preferences have changed over the years. Also, you probably have less time to kill now than when you were younger.
You didn't specify how old you were when you were at your peak, but I'm guessing you were a heavy gamer in the late 90s or early 00s. You'll find a ton of games from that era from Good Old Games that ought to keep you busy for a while. There are lots of games there that I couldn't afford and/or my machine couldn't run decently back then. You could also try free retro-clones of your old favorites.
I agree with the other posters that you ought to try your hand at writing your own games, maybe surprise yourself in the process.
You should be modded troll for that one.
I'm in my mid 40's as of about a week ago. I still play games, single and multiplayer, and I still own the kiddies who think they are hot stuff. Getting older doesn't mean you can't have fun.
35 hours is LOOOOOOOONG nowadays. Most AAA titles on the PC come out in 18-20 hours.
OP wants a game where he doesn't feel he has to play all the time. I get the impression that someone without much game time would want a game you can dip in and out of, as opposed to a monolith of narrative and cinematography.
Think of it as like watching Lord of the Rings in 10 minute segments, every week.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
VVVVVV is one of the best and most challenging Indie games I've played in quite some time. It's a platformer/puzzle game with an absolutely fantastic chiptune soundtrack and striking C64-style visuals (some objects in the game are inspired by classic C64 games and demos).
Caveat: It can be very difficult... but if you're anything like me it'll sink its teeth into you and demand that you complete it.
Doing Things The Hard Way is an absolute fscker tho. :P
What's really missing from the games is depth. Part of this is because the more they try to out-do each other with fancy effects and eye-candy, the more it appears to be like a loud commercial rather than a nicely done presentation. But beyond that, games are now churned out like Hollywood does - all scripted, simplified, and by the numbers.
For instance, they take time to explain *everything* in such horrendous detail and have trainers and all sorts of idiot-hand-holding. Compare this to Baldur's Gate. You knew nothing, you had to learn it as you went, and there was a real sense of a story, precisely because they didn't tell you everything that was happening. Deus Ex? didn't tell you much of anything. Diablo didn't either. In fact, the "great" games were designed to be a good game first and never worried about trophies or making it so that some addle-headed eight year old could get 100% on it on their XBOX or PS3. They were "hard" because you had to think. And they didn't have guides and books available before the game itself came out, either.
Now, compare that to Mass Effect 2. I liked the game, but it was so much more simplified than it had to be. Even the Citadel level was a coupe of barely larger than room-sized areas and was designed so that even a moron couldn't get lost. Everything was possible to obtain as well as complete. Compared to the first game, it was a massive let-down. You never could get off-track with your missions. You never could get lost in a city. You never ran out of ammo. I mean, with that much space on the DVD, they actually *shrunk* the square footage of almost every level in the game.
Depth. Hardly any. Replay-ability? Nearly zero. It doesn't feel like we're entering a world so much as watching a made for TV movie. And, it's everything now. Assassin's Creed? I've played games from the 80s with more depth to the character interactions. Shoot, they couldn't even randomize the dialogs for the city missions. Just the same 4 or 5 canned scenarios. Would it have really killed them to spend another 5-10 hours to bring that up to 20 or 30 so we feel like it's a realistic mission? And, this gets worse as you get older. Eventually you want something that isn't mature because it has lots of sex and violence in it, but because it respects your intelligence enough to not treat you like a child while playing it.
From rubber-band AI to canned dialog to overblown effects and "trophies" for the most useless and inane things possible, it's no wonder people are so nostalgic for the days when gaming meant more than sitting through an 8 hour interactive movie on their screen.
You have no idea how you'll change between now and 60.
Its possible that by 60 you'll have found there there are things other than games that are fun.
That's your mom's lawn, sonny.
Who said anything about not having fun? What does that have to do with accepting how people change, and there's no point in trying to cling to something what evidently starts to pass; as the asking poster seems to do.
You shared with us how in this area such change loosely (your approach to gaming is the same as 3 decades ago?) applies to you...whoa, fascinating. So?
One that hath name thou can not otter
An AI might be predictable, but at least it's not a douchebag.
Heavy Rain is about as much a game as those old interactive laser disc games... or Dragon's Lair.
Are you sure you've actually played Heavy Rain as it doesn't sound like it. It's absolutely nothing like those old interactive laser disc games. Unless you want to claim the same about games like the original PC Alone in the Dark. If anything it's a successor to the point and click adventure games of old, but with a forking narrative and a bit of old school 3rd person horror thrown in.
Pac-Man begins in the winter of 2001, as New York City finishes experiencing the worst blizzard in the history of the city. The intro sequence shows Pac-Man, a renegade DEA agent and former NYPD officer, standing at the top of a skyscraper building as police units arrive. He then experiences a flashback from three years ago. Back in 1998, Pac-Man returned home to find that a trio of apparent junkies had broken into his house while high on a new designer drug called Valkyr.
Get a huge hard disk. Enormous. 1.5Tb or something only costs as much as a game or two now.
Dig out all the old CD's of games that you used to play, buy them off Gog.com or Steam if you don't have them any more. Read all the iso's onto the disk and / or install the Steam/GOG games onto there.
Remember all the games / systems that you've ever played. Find emulators for them all.
Have everything set up so that you can run any of those games from a couple of clicks and no technical hassle (nothing kills a gaming session more than having to diagnose your PC in the middle of it). By the time you get here, you'll have remembered several games that you never completed but loved. You'll have got back into playing all sorts of older games. You'll remember hearing of their sequels / prequels and want to try them out. You'll have been exposed to numerous games on Steam / GOG.com that you find interesting, and also others for the systems you are emulating (even if that's only DOS).
I did this and it's great. No more cutting-edge PC required, just double-click and go. A quick game of Chaos on the Spectrum followed by learning how nice a game Comix Zone was on the Megadrive (bought it on Steam because it came with some other Megadrive games that I wanted for free), followed by a quick bash through a handful of indie games. Hell, I have 200 games on my Steam account now and most of those have been purchased since I did this.
Most importantly - stop buying those headline games until a year or so after release. Headline games are only good for "I got it first" arguments among kids. It takes a year or so to realise whether a game is actually any good or just another FPS and you could have saved your money.
Browse through the Steam store's less than £4 section. Some wonderful things in there and if you click through you can often get a whole series of games for the price of a single modern one. Don't buy *everything*, just buy yourself a couple of things that seem relevant. Demos are always good here. If it doesn't have a demo, wants a brand-new PC, or has some icky DRM attached to it - ignore it for a year until those problems go away. Suggestions from others for particular games are unlikely to inspire and most of those games are only purchased if you come back to it later and decide that *you* want it.
Just get back into the gaming mindset - don't spend forever on purchases, don't await hyped-out games, don't struggle to run the latest games, don't wait for the 10 minute intros to cut through. Just get into the game (even if that's a slow-paced adventure) at a double-click whenever you like. All that matters is the time on the game, not all the related gumph. And if you get frustrated with something, kick back to a game you last played when you were a kid at the touch of a button.
I disagree. Ridiculously big budgets are killing games, just like they are killing movies and music. The more money there is on the line, the more pressure there is on the creators to go with a tried and tested formula, in the hope they can minimise the risk. In other words, the variety and creativity from the early days of computer gaming is being sucked out by the games industry.
If one wants to see something fresh, indie games are the way to go (World of Goo, Osmos, Amnesia, Minecraft). Adventure games from smaller European companies can also be quite good (The Longest Journey, Black Mirror... check out www.adventuregamers.com).
This is not to say that no worthwhile games are being published through the industry. The problem is, the non-clones usually remain obscure because they don't receive the advertising budgets of the clones.
My 2c.
Most people, as they get older, find it harder to get into new games, new music, new movies, new food, new sports, new friends, etc. Getting into new stuff takes effort, uninterrupted time, attention span, and a certain kind of ignorance that comes with youth and that lets you see warmed-over crap as exciting and fresh. You eventually reach an age at which it's hard to find anything that seems genuinely worth your excitement; you get jaded . It doesn't work that way for everyone in every arena, but that's generally how it goes.
You are really serious with that tirade about opinions after your "you should be modded troll for your opinion I disagree with"? Really?
This has nothing to with denying whatever fun stuff you do. The TFS is basically "My hobby is passing away, how to keep it on life support?" Huh?... There's no point. Not if he can't find it himself.
When it comes to my interests I'm always saddened that there's lots of more to explore / know / experience in the area than I can possibly do in my lifetime, even if devoting whole of it to just that one area. The primary problem is letting go bits I'd like to know closer, but there's not enough time.
One that hath name thou can not otter
thats because you are from a generation that didnt grow up gaming. in your time, these stuff that are found in games (spacely stuff, fantasy worlds this that) were desired, but could only be dreamed. your generation grew up with those dreams. those dreams stuck. you are now enjoying games continually because they satisfy your generation.
our generation (early to mid 70s born and later) have grown up WHILE gaming. we didnt have to dream, we had all those dreams satisfied. got space-like ? fire up a space game. watched conan ? fire up conan and play.
we satisfied our shit. your generation, yet didnt.
Read radical news here
More important things like buying a riding lawn mower to prune your suburban lawn? Getting older doesn't mean that you must sacrifice video games as an entertaining outlet. It's not so different than watching films or television. Actually, I find myself less and less interested in on-going television shows as I get older... I fall asleep during them. Watching television is such a passive experience, there's nothing to keep me interested.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
No, more like you and your son rebuilding that Honda CB750 into a cafe racer. =)
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Something happened to the context of Chess too, essentially rather suddenly.
Back In The Day if you went to a bookstore, Chess was virtually the only competitive hobby that solidly rewarded studying, and the rating system was near-perfect (with certain blips like scholastic or isolated areas.) Before the internet, poor man's info feed was the bookstore, and I for one found it not possible to interact as an accepted peer in most other areas "off the street". Also, up until about 1995 chess had a "culture" with its past heroes, and its famous benchmarks, etc. It was a solid outlet that lasted pretty well.
Suddenly the real power of the internet took hold. At first it was like a "secret weapon" to train for Old School Chess, but somehow, being able to dig around in all kinds of other interactive activities took away the silent monopoly on accessibility that Chess once had. I have remarked that my time here on slashdot, if intelligently compiled, could form four college courses, aka intro classes on the topics covered well here.
(Basic computer security and exposing corporate tricks, the rise of Big Brother vs. politics, etc. )
Yet also, when we joke about not even reading TFA's, we're saying that we don't look toward our past heroic moments anymore. Without the lineage-culture mood, coinciding exactly with the rise of computers, Chess stopped being fun when it became just position crunching up to the point you hit your particular wall. (Typically 1800 aka "just below expert" is a well known barrier when the additional work now required exceeds the fun.)
But the last sad point is when you hit that wall, you know exactly who you can beat, and who will beat you. On a particular day it moves around a little, but the metagame is the same, and its effect on your local crew. Joe the Expert beats you, you beat everyone else. Go to a tourney and you can beat up to the 1600's, and the Sandbaggers who should be 1900 beat you, and you score 4/6, just enough not to win money.
On the net, you can collaboratively Do Stuff, and even if you plod along for years you can eventually add your little pocket of cultural contribution to something. Whippersnappers are fresher, so be it, your experience counts elsewhere as it grows, and ... Net Life intersecting with training real skills that can actually go towards a job is more fun overall than even the Grand Old Game.
Now a days, I use Chess only as a mental metric to test the shape of my sadly erratic nerves. There's some value with it as a study on force & initiative too. But as a grand pursuit, for me it has become a matter of RIP.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As a counter perhaps I still enjoy playing games because I have a richer imagination. That my desires are less shallow, incapable of being fulfilled by the latest version of CoD, or Madden.
I still play games because I enjoy them. I enjoy them in the same way that enjoy a good book, a good movie, etc. I'm not limited to video games either, I play new boardgames and table top games. I do so with my children.
To answer the OP as you get older your life becomes more complex. You have more demands on your time. You might not get the same joy out of playing because you believe you should be doing something else, or that there are other things you'd rather do. If its the former then that's a shame, if its the later embrace the other things.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I think he had a valid point though. You can read it as trolling, or you can read it saying "tastes change with age".
I found that I have this problem too, I was slowly finding that most games don't really hold my attention anymore. I was a bit bummed out about this, since I used to be an avid (perhaps to avid) gamer, and found myself pondering whether games themselves got worse the older I got, or if I was just moving past them. Tons of things I loved in my youth are no longer satisfying, not just games. Books and movies I used to love seem rather shallow and stupid now as well.
Its just natural aging. You are not the same person you used to be, events have happened, and you have grown, so its silly to assume that your tastes will remain the same.
I used to really enjoy games like WoW, but slowly I realized that I wasn't having fun. It was work. It was work populated by the lowest common denominator who get great joy about using naughty words like "tits", and think that calling someone "gay" is the height of witty repartee . I don't have the time and patience I once had for it. I used to enjoy most FPS/deathmatch type games, and found that I don't anymore. They are mostly "stealth" games, where I get to spend 6 hours staring at the back of a cover wall, and none of them have really innovated on Quake3 or UT2003. I still manage to enjoy a decent western RPG (totally lost patience for the drama and cut scene heavy Japanese ones, if I wanted annoying drama and characters I would read a Jane Austin novel), Dragon Age was fun, until they started spawning $6000 worth of DLC. Most games are hindered by being mainly console ports though, and I have less patience for working against the design elements than I used to. I have broader experiences, and greater means than I did as a teen or in my early 20s, so I have more alternatives to turn to when games start being arbitrarily frustrating.
The last game to actually get me to obsess over it (meaning play it for 6 straight hours without realizing it) was Minecraft. The honeymoon is slightly over, since I realized there is really nothing much to do after a bit, and the thrill of discovery wears off.
But generally I play for 5 hours, and move on to other, non-gaming, projects. I'm currently plotting a collaborative novel, and it is a bit more appealing and enticing than playing Call of Duty 2001: The Bigactionexplosionbangbanggogoteamamerica Odyssey, as is many other fun projects I have around the house. Instead of trying to avoid being tea-bagged by 13 years olds with more free time than me, I can go out to the local pub with some friends, or read one of the 50 or so books in my "to read" pile. Sometimes going for a nice long hike is more fun... Sometimes studying things just for fun is... etc... Your horizons expand with age. There is no shame in finding your appeal in video games waning.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
This could be just how my brain works, but I figure if I'm 40 and I am still able to own kids in fast-paced multiplayer games, then this is actually a BAD thing because it means I've invested way too much time into the game when I should be doing other things with my life. Not to criticize you in any way, it's just a reason why I feel that sucking at such games as one gets older is nothing to be ashamed of at all. Means you've moved onto other, more important things.
No, being able to own those kiddies means his senses, reactions and eye-hand co-ordination are still good at 40. Maybe even great. Let's hope your next surgeon if you need one kicks ass at video games and that the guy behind you on the highway isn't thinking it's too bad his reactions have gone to heck and he can't see well enough to play games any more. Games are just a choice of outlet as someone said. Different things engage different people. That's what makes us individuals.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
Yeah ... Star Control 2 was an awesome game.