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.
30 year old gamers feeling disenfranchised?
- Thread starter xDarc
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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.
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.Tanakh said:
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.
I'm nearing 40. Whenever there's a glut in the gaming biz, i just turn to older games. Or what is more possible these days than ever - open source games. Roguelikes and such. Stuff from sourceforge.net, just scan through for new stuff. More such things out there than ever before.
Some of my favorite games have been free open source games, even back in the day when they called them 'public domain games' and you'd go get them on disk or out of a mag. Plus, of course, there's indie games, and w/the likes of steam actually putting 'em out there they are no longer a secret that only the most nerdy know about but actually very easy to find.
Its a bit easier for me though as I'm a turn based strategy fan. I like rpg's and aciton games and all that too, but I think its hard to go back to a really old rpg or especially - old action games. The old rpg's are hard to go back to because you already know the story, its like re-reading a book, can be fun, but doesn't recapture the magic of the first time. And even if you are generally forgiving of retro graphics, its hard to be so forgiving in action games (at least for me). But old strategy games, for some reason, maintain their re-playability. For the rest of my life i'll be able to enjoy going back to replay imperialism 2 or age of wonders for instance no matter what kind of advances there are. And as you replay some old gems or try out a bunch of open source games, eventually a new release will come out that you actually like.
Some of my favorite games have been free open source games, even back in the day when they called them 'public domain games' and you'd go get them on disk or out of a mag. Plus, of course, there's indie games, and w/the likes of steam actually putting 'em out there they are no longer a secret that only the most nerdy know about but actually very easy to find.
Its a bit easier for me though as I'm a turn based strategy fan. I like rpg's and aciton games and all that too, but I think its hard to go back to a really old rpg or especially - old action games. The old rpg's are hard to go back to because you already know the story, its like re-reading a book, can be fun, but doesn't recapture the magic of the first time. And even if you are generally forgiving of retro graphics, its hard to be so forgiving in action games (at least for me). But old strategy games, for some reason, maintain their re-playability. For the rest of my life i'll be able to enjoy going back to replay imperialism 2 or age of wonders for instance no matter what kind of advances there are. And as you replay some old gems or try out a bunch of open source games, eventually a new release will come out that you actually like.
I think I love you a little bit.xDarc said: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.AverageJoe said:Don't lump us all into the same category, man!malestrithe said:
I still pretend consoles don't exist
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.
No, but really I feel pretty much the same about that, just never heard anyone else put into words what I've been thinking. Grats.
Although I'm speaking as a 21 year old here. If I'm very honest though, disregarding PC gaming entirely for a second, there is no way in hell I would have become a gamer if I had started gaming any earlier than the Playstation era. I cannot get into much older than that, and I couldn't even back when I was starting out gaming around 1996.
I think the thing is, the gamers in their 30s who grew up on games knew it as a nerdy hobby. And lets be honest here, as much as most gamers themselves still equate gaming as a nerdy hobby, it's just not anymore, they're kidding themselves. It wasn't really in the sixth generation, perhaps not even much in the fifth. Now we're right at the end of the seventh and it's definitely fucking not. There are still nerdy games but they are overshadowed by the majority. Everyone plays games now, you go into a game store here and its staffed by stylish guys and 20-something girls who all know their games and are what you really might call "hardcore" gamers. The stereotype of the basement dwelling nerd is all but gone from gaming, and I think games themselves reflect that now. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your perspective, to me its mostly a good thing. But I suppose for anyone who grew up in a very different gaming world than I did and really wants to cling onto that, it might be detrimental. I really do think this is the "golden age of gaming" as someone else said. Games are a lot of fun while also being intuitive, which is very important to me. Some depth and variety has been lost in the process, that I agree with, but its swings and roundabouts, and for me at least I find that games are actually playable now and more mature in general.
He's got a point, though. Arena shooters were a completely different beast from modern tactical shooters. I remember playing games where two players could spend several minutes trying to kill each other, because neither one could hit the other with all the dodging going on. Modern FPS games are more like an RTS where each player controls a single unit; it's more about flanking, positioning, and rock paper scissors than about twitch skill. Tactics, rather than reflexes. It's not a bad thing that games like that exist, but I think it is a bad thing that they've so completely replaced the older variety.Vault101 said:
OT: I'm 22, not 30+, but I also feel that certain genres that I loved growing up are gone now. I love some of the newer varieties of videogame as well, but I would really like some new arena shooters and combat flight sims, two genres that have gone by the wayside in favor of slower, less twitch based and more complicated fare. I'm sick of Counterstrike and Elite clones; bring on the UT and Wing Commander clones!
On the other hand, certain other genres I grew up on are coming back thanks to indie games; I still say VVVVVV was the best game to come out in 2010. It's a different market than the one I grew up on, but it's not all bad and it's not impossible to find modern examples of old genres.
Nostalgia has nothing to do with the fundamental difference in the most basic mechanics of shooters today vs shooters 10 years ago. It has nothing to do with CoD outselling summer block buster movies while in the 90's doom took YEARS to sell several million copies. It has nothing to do with the changing demographic of gamers, the watering down of gaming itself, for market penetration.Vault101 said:
That's not nostalgia. That's big business making McGames and pissing in my wheaties, and it's a pretty observable fact if you have any point of reference from back then, that is grounded in reality.
I'm 44. And female. I remember playing Space Invaders in the movie theatre (we didn't have real video arcades at that point). Then my Dad bought me a box that went on the TV and allowed you to play Pong, Single-player volleyball, and a "shoot the glowing dot on the screen and pretend you are firing a gun and its a target" game. They were hard-wired into the box. And the box didn't even have a name I remembered. It was later I got a NES, a Donkey Kong Cartridge, and another game where you played an archer who went into a dungeon after treasure.
I played a lot more games in the video arcade. I was even there for the release of the Star Trek Strategic Operations Simulator game in a local arcade and got a free T-shirt about the game. I also loved playing things like Tutenkham, DigDug, Joust, Gauntlet, Asteroids, Centipede, Pac-Man (of course), Battlezone (my favorite!) and so on. I didn't get an actual computer until 1991. I mainly played in Arcades and never really got into console gaming. So, no, I don't feel particularly disenfranchised.
I also play roguelikes such as Angband (hardest games in existence, no joking).
I played a lot more games in the video arcade. I was even there for the release of the Star Trek Strategic Operations Simulator game in a local arcade and got a free T-shirt about the game. I also loved playing things like Tutenkham, DigDug, Joust, Gauntlet, Asteroids, Centipede, Pac-Man (of course), Battlezone (my favorite!) and so on. I didn't get an actual computer until 1991. I mainly played in Arcades and never really got into console gaming. So, no, I don't feel particularly disenfranchised.
I also play roguelikes such as Angband (hardest games in existence, no joking).
"I'm a white male aged 18-30; *everyone* cares what I think!"Chemical Alia said:
In my experience, I haven't found female gamers around my age to be all that rare, although that could just be the nature of where I hang out and my general social group.
Speaking of the Genesis, I really need to dig that baby out again. Get some Road Rash 2 or Streets of Rage up in here. Now *that* was co-op.
I agree with this. I personally think that devs should stop focusing on how to make a game look more realistic, and concentrate on making it feel realistic. Organic character movement, better writing, etc. And yeah, EA can suck it. Big time.Westaway said:
Okay. Sorry for lumping you into one group.AverageJoe said:Don't lump us all into the same category, man!malestrithe said:
I still pretend consoles don't exist
But at the time, they were not filling out petitions to have console games ported onto the PC. This whole drive to ask, no Demand, Dark Souls to be on PC would have been unheard of when I was a kid. If it was on the console, PC gamers back then simply did not care about the existence of Dark Souls.