30 year old gamers feeling disenfranchised?

[BreakfastMan]

19, but going to post anyway, damnit!

As someone who never played games that much as a kid, and only really got into gaming about 6-7 years ago, I like to think I have an interesting perspective on this, especially since I have not been playing games nearly as long as youse guize.

Anyway, I still like modern games. There is a lot of good stuff getting released, and there is a lot of interesting stuff to come. So, I am excited about the future.

But the really interesting question in my mind, is would I think the same if I was your age? Because, I honestly do not know. Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, and while I think that many people seriously misrepresent the old days as "innovative" (how many bloody mascot platformers, fighters, point and click adventures, and beat-em-ups were there? a zillion?), I do not know if I would feel the same at that age. I can see, however, that if the games I played and loved were not getting made (or not getting made in the quantities they once were), I would feel pretty disappointing and alienated from gaming. Which is what I think many of those who do claim modern gaming is in the crapper is coming from. I know I would feel annoyed and disenfranchised with modern gaming if it was all racing games and bejeweled-style puzzlers, even if every game was the best damn example of the genre.

So, I guess what I am saying after this long and winding rant is... I understand, but I do not agree.

 

[Blade_125]

You sound very cynical, but offer no reasons as to why. Maybe if you offered what is wrong with mainstream gaming we could have an actual discussion about it. What games do you like? What was great about gaming growing up that now doesn't exist?

I have many games that I have accumulated over the years. I don't play all of them now, but I have never suffered from a lack of something I enjoyed playing. I am not a fan of the first person shooter, but there are other genres I enjoy and still play.

So, do you know like one genre that isn't up to snuff right now? Your comment is so confusing to me. One thing that exists now that didn't in the 80's/90's is variety. There are so many different games, and so many good games to choose from. Which is also why I don't understand why so many people scramble to get a game on release. They drop in price a few months after the fact. THat is what I usually do, and I never lack for something to play.

Sorry I haven't read all the posts on this yet, so if you have answered my questions I guess I will see them soon, otherwise you need to define what you are asking.

Edit *** Forgot to add my age.I am 36.

 

[Blade_125]

Maybe you're just getting tired of games. Most people go through that in their 30s. Childrens' brains are wired for play, 30 year old brains aren't. If you can't think of any specific reasons why they are failing you, but you're just going 'meh' a lot, it's probably that.

Well it's not that I don't play any more, it's just that they don't seem to make any that I wanna play. So I end playing the same game over and over for months until something new comes along that seems worth it.

My biggest gripe is this: In the 90's innovation wasn't a buzz word. Every bit of tech, every game engine, was being rebuilt from scratch every year or two. For me, that was the best thing about gaming, imagination combined with the power of technology.

When Xbox360 came out, and stayed out going on 7 years now- all of that felt scuttled with games being made for hardware that is the equivalent of a dinosaur.

When the xbox did first come out, the PC gaming community still felt a bit insulated from the effects of consoles.

What are the effects of consoles? They started being cool again. Nintendo stopped being cool in jr high. If you still played nintendo you were probably not very popular, etc. Gamers were a tiny market for a long time. The new consoles changed all that and started outselling other types of entertainment media, which was largely unheard of up til recently.

Why? Did you ever wonder where all those people came from? Maybe the face of the gamer has changed, but gaming has gone mass market. Gaming has gone McGaming, for McMoney. That's how I feel about it these days. Every new game is just a bland calculation to sell copies. There are a few gems, and while minecraft isn't my bag because it reminds of playing with legos which i stopped doing a long time ago, it is definitely a gem.

However, almost all games for PC in late 90's early 00's used to be like minecraft. You could pick up any number of titles that had something special or unique about them, some new technological feature that you had to see to believe. etc.

Now a days it's just re-release CoD/BF/GoW every year or two because that's what McGaming is now. Stick to what you know. Stick to the formulas. Well those games are all garbage anyhow, they took the most important thing out of an FPS game, moving. You have to crouch, go prone, to manage an artificial accuracy modifier... it's like some parent acting as ref while a match is going on shouting "No running, kids!" Forget about dodging bullets, which used to be just as important as shooting them- and made the game fun in the first place.


They want everyone to sit and take potshots at each other so there is no "skill" in those games any more. They want everyone to get kills, everyone to have fun, and to be able to do so while having a hand free to eat/drink because we know xbox players love the couch. They make it so anyone can play and thats what made FPS gaming a house hold item. Dumbing gaming down made it sell more. Don't know how else to put it. Well guess what, I remember what they were like and today's versions are complete jokes, empty shell comes to mind.

Should give you an idea where I'm coming from now.

Hmmmm. Game companies what to make money, and for everyone to have fun so they buy their games....

So your complaints are more that developers are less adverse to taking risks (something I dislike too, but that is hardly new), and that games don't trend toward the hard core gamer who plays 60+ hours a week on a game so that they are amazing at it. Rather now they trend toward making a game more accesable to everyone.

I am not trying to be disrespectful to you, but that is how you are coming across in this post. Maybe you can clarify.

I will be honest that I am not much of a FPS player. I liked counterstrike back in the day, which wasn't about cover based shooting (maybe that's why I like it more than preset day games). So if it is the lack of innovation in FPS's then you have an argument, but the answer is that companies want to make money.

I might suggest you try to branch out and give other genres a go. I would recommend Arkham Asylum if you haven't tried it (then Arkham City). I think that is an action game that would harken more back to older game mechanics.

 

[ace_of_something]

32 started on my older brother's atari and nes in the mid 1980's. I think I actually play video games a lot more now than I did in my 20's I was too busy with getting the career going and college. I mean, I still played games but not like now where I play nearly every day for a bit. So most of the stuff from the xbox ps2 era I kind of didn't see. I've never really been big in to first person shooters on PC or console. Except Unreal Tournament I was waaay into those.

My biggest irritant is that most console games cost $60 and the price doesn't drop for damn near a year. Maybe it's because I'm old but I really hate digital distribution I've had one too many computers implode/explode over the years. re-downloading all that stuff is a huge pain in the ass. I'll DL a game if it's small, cheap and exclusively a DL'able game. Kind of like the stuff on the playstation store or some of the indie games on steam. That's about it though.

Think that's all I have to add.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I started with a Commodore 64 hooked up to a black-and-white TV set.

I, too, am bothered by all these colourful empty calories of the majority of current-gen games.

For the better part of the last decade, I managed to get the whole family to appreciate the entertainment value of old games. Just about any old console works, and for computers we only opted for emulators when we ran out of cables or input devices.

I could easily imagine the kids of our kids enjoying, say, Archon or Ghosts'n Goblins or Parodius or Taisen Pazurudama, but I don't think anything much of this latest and supposedly greatest generation of console gaming will survive. Some of the old, if not original spirit seems alive and kicking, but only in those minis or PSN/XBOX LIVE titles.

The latest kickstarter rage has given me hope for about a week before I sensed decay and decadence already setting in, and I have yet to see any positive outcome there.

But I sure am watching... and hoping.

I did enjoy Skyrim for three experimental and entertaining walkthroughs. Will pick it up apgain when the expansion hits. I did enjoy about half of Amalur, the first DLC pissed me off big time, though.

The latest title that has given me true old-school chills and minor brain cramps was Dark Souls. King's Field all over again, better in some respects and the very same in others.

 

[F4LL3N]

20 but I don't see the harm in me replying, I won't destroyed the thread.

It's clear that you're still into gaming, or else you'd probably be on a different forum discussing a different hobby. Either you're not looking hard enough for the games that would interest you, or what draws you to games isn't being put into games anymore.

I rarely buy games either anymore and I'm much younger than you. It's probably just the time, and all the change going on (is there change going on?)

I think a lot of people on here have reduced the amount of games they buy, particularly in the last couple of years.

I reject the statement that gaming is getting worse or stale, it has better quality and more variety than ever. It's a psychological change in the person thinking it, probably just natural change from growing up. I think what is happening now is more of a 'movement' than any downfall in the industry. When consumers stick together they almost have enough power to shape the industry how we want it, while it's still young (but we better hurry up, because it'll be bigger than the movie industry before we know it.)

 

[Worgen]

I've been getting allot of indie games lately and I'm having a blast with them, I just beat vessel and shank 2.

 

[NoNameMcgee]

33 years old. Never made the switch to PC gaming. We've had a pc in the house since the early 80s, but I've always used it as a tool for printshop and wordprocessing. Never for gaming.

Remember when PC Elite used to mean something? I do. The PC gamers acted above the console gamers because they were above the console scrubs. They did not beg for games to be on their platforms. They did not preach the values of PC gaming every chance they get. They did not wear their elitism as a badge of honor.

Well, I can't take PC gamers of seriously because they made the concept into something of a joke. To a lot of them, being about to use the "console" to cheat makes PC gaming better. To a lot of them, because you can use a controller for certain games means there there is no excuses. When called out on their BS, modern PC gamers would resort to juvenile sarcasm to prove their points. Now, they beg for games to be on PC. PC gamers back in the day pretended the consoles did not exist.

Also get off my lawn!

Don't lump us all into the same category, man!

I still pretend consoles don't exist

 

[xDarc]

33 years old. Never made the switch to PC gaming.

Don't lump us all into the same category, man!

I still pretend consoles don't exist

The 30 somethings who never crossed over to PC gaming really puzzle me. Early generation consoles were CHILDRENS TOYS. You'd go to toys r' us and there'd be an entire aisle of nothing but glass display cases filled with flashy packaging. Parents would take you. Consequently, as kids began to hit puberty, they started handing down their nintendos and what have you- discarding much of the things from their childhood to prove to themselves they were growing up.

Plenty of kids growing up did that. Some moved on to PC gaming to play more "grown up" games. You might point out that sega CD had some titles geared at older audiences, but that was slim pickings. Point is, consoles still carried the children's toys connotation and PCs were for big kids. If you were going to be a nerd and keep playing the vidya games, at least you'd be a mature nerd.

I know it's different now and consoles are grown up, marketed to all ages. But it didn't use to be that way. I'd say not until PS2 did that really begin to change.

 

[xDarc]

But of course, things always change, the pendulum always swings back. There have been very interesting developments lately, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it's all headed.

By interesting developments are you referring to kickstarter? Because I do see some hope there. Please share.

 

[Waaghpowa]

Stick to the formulas.

I'm 24, but I do have a long history of gaming on just about everything you can imagine. I still have my original copy of Duke Nukem episodes on 4.5 inch floppy for DOS from '91. (Yes, I knew how to operate DOS at a very young age...)

What bothers me about the current gen is the small portion I did quote. I feel that this generation is far too focused on "keeping the forumla". Not necessarily because it works, but because it sells. They're far too focused on making it sell than taking risks, so we end up getting games that are essentially the same, but different settings/names etc.

Now I believe that this is the fault of the current gen consoles in the sense that they've raised the costs of development to the point where they have to sell the most copies possible in order to recoup their losses and make what profit they can. They make back this money by making the game itself more appealing to a larger audience and as such we get the "familiar" and "formulaic" games that we're seeing now, because it's easy to market something to people that they recognize. People in general are simply afraid of change.

I frequently go back to some of my older games simply because I have more fun with them, not because I yearn for a better time when games were better because, let's face it, there were a lot of shit games back then too. Games like Max Payne 1 and 2 where the first was simply amazing in gameplay, action and story telling. Then Max Payne 2 came along, took all that and improved on it, it was simply an amazing game. I just don't feel that really happens as often as it should with the current gen.

I don't believe that I'm susceptible to nostalgia as I'm generally objective about everything and will usually judge something on it's own merits first (In cases like with the Syndicate reboot, that was just shit and stupid. They made it an FPS because of my reasons above, and apparently the average person is too dumb for a strategy game).

My hopes is that with things like Kickstarter, more ambitious and creative games will start being made. If it turns out that the few kickstarter projects I backed, such as Wasteland, end up being huge successes, my hope is that it can change the minds of publishers and devs on what is viable vs what is not. Publishers thought there was no market for a Wasteland game? well if it turns out to be amazing, hopefully it changes their minds and they start taking more risks, or even drop development costs.

 

[joe-h2o]

32 and started with Atari 2600 in the summer of 69 .. er .. I meant 84.

There are about 3 maybe 4 games come out a year I have any interest in. Nothing to do with wanting things "as they were" though it's purely because I like big open sandbox games like the Fallouts and Elder Scrolls and I like modding.

The Indie scene isn't my thing at all. I played games that looked like most of them years ago and if I wanted to relive my youth i'd grow my hair and get a mullet, it's cheaper.

You're an LFC fan, what do you mean you'd *get* a mullet?

For me (31 years old), I find that modern game marketing seems to be aimed at a younger generation, with a few high profile exceptions. I don't necessarily think there's a lack of games that we can enjoy, just that there's a string sense that the consoles seem to be the stomping ground of the immature kids. I think addressing the maturity issues on Xbox Live voice chat might go a long way to addressing that.

 

[xDarc]

you cant define somones tastes as "30 years old...plays games" what if they really like current games?

I don't see how anyone who grew up on 8 bit consoles, moved into PC gaming and lived through the golden age of innovation and depth could even remotely be impressed by the current modern video game.

There's people my age in this thread who have never strayed from a console; which was dead to me at the age of 12 circa 1994 and I'll tell you why.

Doom.

What kind of gamer did not save his money and buy a PC to get in on the most influential game of all time? To say nothing of the other RTS/TBS and myriad of other shooters coming out at that time- each one fresh and new... What kind of gamer stood by as the 90's glory days were in full swing and said, i'll stick by my SNES/Sega???

It honestly does not surprise me that someone who made that choice would consider themselves content with today's games.

 

[Chemical Alia]

I'm 30 next month, and I haven't bought a new game since Gears of War 3, and never finished that one. I've always been very selective about the games I choose to play, more so than most of the people I know who play games as well.

I feel that not a lot of genres and styles appeal to my tastes, but it doesn't feel like it's more of a problem now than it was when I was eleven or twelve. I certainly have more money to play games these days, but it's time that I have very little of. I tend to want to stick to the games I'm already familiar with when I do get a bit of time to play, and lots of the games that my friends love and look forward to with much anticipation just don't appeal to me.

Mostly I just miss having the time to sit down and enjoy a long game, and to play online for hours with my friends. Getting good at a game after a while and just having fun with it. I still have fun playing my old Genesis games on the Wii and Steam, so that's cool.

girl gamers are more disenfranchised

hahah KIDDING kidding.....

you cant define somones tastes as "30 years old...plays games" what if they really like current games?

You should try being female AND old, olol. I'm actually fairly certain that I don't even exist.

 

[TrevHead]

UK gamer Born 1979. Spectrum +2, Megadrive, PS1, Amiga 1200, PS2 then PC Elistist in 1999/00

With how PC Gaming is no longer in its heyday, Crappy AAA PC ports, less AAA singleplayer games & more mmos, free2play, monetisation of game mechanics etc I was feeling very left out too.

Then around 3 years ago I got into retrogaming, emulation, 2D indie and doujin games so that I could rediscover my Japanese / arcade gaming roots. Then I discovered shmups like Blue Wish Resurrection and the hardcore community that played them over at the Shmups Forum, PPL who were passionate gamers, which rubbed off onto me and I learnt the correct mindset for playing arcade games.

Last year I bought myself a 360, best thing I ever did. I still like my PC m&K games but having a console opens up so many new genres I can play. Now I just enjoy good games. Vanquish, Dark Souls, Mushihimisama Futari, Bayoneta life is good!

My advice get as far away from the industry hype train as you can. Don't play just whats popular and mainstream. Try new genres, subgenres & find your own little niches and find like minded ppl who are passionate about their games.

Also stay away from gaming tabloid sensationalism, they will just wind you up, especially if youre a PC gamer.

 

[Elate]

Well I'm not 30, but I was gaming before I could walk, early 90s (Dads old Amiga, god I miss it.) but honestly things are in no way as desolate as you make them out to be, just go have a browse on the indie scene, and you'll find a plethora of original games, with nice aesthetics, I'm subscribed to every indie bundle I can find. It's just the big name developers that keep churning out the same crap now.

 

[Something Amyss]

31 here. Not sure about disenfranchised, but I've only bought two games retail in the last year. I'm just not that into the offerings right now.

 

[tacotrainwreck]

It goes with no longer being the target audience. We just don't buy as many games as the kids do, so there's not as much money in pandering to us. I'm 29, I love video games, but I know that the big companies are aiming for a younger demographic, so it makes complete sense to feel more than a little disenfranchised. I have a bit of hope in some of these kickstarters, however, because I know the AAA market won't be looking for my money any time soon.

 

[xDarc]

CoD Black Ops - Zombies for 5 months

If you like Shooters PvP, then why the heck you are not playing also BF 3 or Tribes?

Tribes is not really to my tastes and I did play BF2142 and BFBC2. I played the demo- excuse me- open beta of BF3 and found to be even less tolerable than BFBC2. My issue with those games is the overuse of radar and spotting which discourage movement, the snipers which discourage movement, the cone of fire which discourage movement, the prone position which discourages movement, you get the picture.

FPS games that don't give you the speed to dodge the other guy's fire while shooting back, aren't real FPS games IMHO.

Could you imagine if this is how 90's shooters played? How fucking boring it would have been to watch guys like Fata1ity play in big money tournaments? I know how these modern shooters want me to play, and I understand how to succeed at them, I just don't want to because it is boring.

Lots of people have no idea what I am talking about, but old skool shooters are like miracle whip. How do you know you don't like it if you haven't tried it? That's what we're facing today.

I gave modern shooters a chance, but tastes like someone pissed in my wheaties.

 

[xDarc]

Well I'm not 30, but I was gaming before I could walk...

Are you thinking about getting metal legs? I hear it's a risky procedure.