Has your taste in video games ever changed?

[Xprimentyl]

Yeah. I went from having varied tastes and appreciating almost anything to disliking and being sick of almost everything. I've become pretty particular about what I want. I barely have the patience anymore.

I?ll second this. In the early 2000s with my Original Xbox, I?d try pretty much anything. Then during my Xbox 360/PS3 era, my tastes refined and I pretty much stuck within the FPS and RPG/Adventure genres but played broadly within them. Then, with the Xbox One, I started to see gaming as a one-trick pony. The newness wore off it started to feel like I?d played all these ?new? games before, except now, they?re largely broken and partial re-skinned messes meted out a DLC and microtransaction at a time. Excitement turned into cynicism, and I don?t see any return to form any time soon. When you?ve got 2-3 companies making Call of Duties, a new developer who decided the Halo franchise which traditionally sells itself needed pay-to-win elements and monopolizing publishers actively seeking out promising developers to consume and conform to produce marketable mediocrity, you can pretty much see the writing on the wall: it?s no longer about the products; it?s about the profits.

 

[Joccaren]

My tastes haven't changed so much as the market at large has.

Always loved RPGs and adventure games, and N64 Rare games were some of my favourites. Of course, such games don't really exist any more these days, but maybe Yooka Laylee will scratch that itch.
FPS games I've also always loved... But single player, or with one or two friends. Star Wars Battlefront 2, and Battlefield 2, will remain my favourites here. Modern shooters I would like more if they had extensive single player with bots and ect., but that's a rarity so most of them I don't really play that much any more.
Always loved 4X games, Civ being one of the first games I played. Of course, on the downside, most new 4X games are released rather unfinished and in dire need of balancing patches, so it takes a while before they're really worth playing over older titles.
RPGs I've always liked, but we're entering the era of Action RPGs, with few of the older style RPG. Action RPGs are ok, but they're not really that well designed for the most part these days.

I could go on, but I think we get the point. My tastes haven't really changed, and my top games are still my top games... But a lot of the modern renditions are losing the best parts of those games, as we go from focusing on creating fun games, to market tested mass-appeal and rapid release with post-release patching. I'm not going to pretend things were perfect back when, but a lot of things were different, and in some ways better.

 

[happyninja42]

Yeah my tastes have changed to a decent degree. I find myself less interested in games about mass killing as the primary game mechanic. If games offer me a "no kill" option to completion, I almost always take it.

That's probably the most significant change for me, as the core things I like in video games, have pretty much stayed the same. I've never really sat down and itemized what I used to like versus what I currently like, so it's hard to compare now to 30+ years ago when I was first gaming. I barely remember that person at all, much less what his game interests were. But like I said, the core stuff is pretty much unchanged, just how it's implemented is different. Definitely the violence as a medium is the most significant change.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

To be honest, yes but not in a narrowing type of way but rather in a widening of taste. I started with the NES around it's debut in the late 80s, and not long after that got a PC, so I was introduced nearly right away to two different concepts of gaming. Consoles and PC had a wider distinction in what was programmed for each, and that difference helped me have an appreciation for such a wide range of games at an early age I've only since kept that gulf rather than attempted to narrow it.
That might be why I've got a backlog that would take about 2-3 years of my life to get through...

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It's remained more or less the same since the PS2 era.

 

[Padwolf]

A little. I can't stand certain types of Japanese RPG's. I love Final Fantasy and never stopped loving it. Dragon Quest, too. But there are others I just can't stand anymore, like Persona. Jesus christ I'll never forget the day I tried Persona 4. The game itself had a very interesting plot and ideas, but it was the one character who threw me off, Chie... fucking hell Chie. I played it for about 2 hours and she was the most annoying piece of crap ever. Turned it off and never looked back.

Other than that, my tastes have stayed the same, as long as the characters are good and the story is good, I'll play it.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I guess my gaming tastes have evolved just due to experiencing more and more games. The games I tend to love are games that do at least something new so it's not a that I knew I'd love such and such game when I bought it. For example, I never played a spectacle fighter before Bayonetta and I just completely loved the dodge offset mechanic, which I didn't even know was a mechanic prior to buying the game. Even something like the Team ICO games, there's nothing mechanically there that's unique and special, but they are rather unique games in everything but that and I love them all. I didn't like open world games way back on PS2 and I still don't like them, mainly because very few devs know how to properly make them (not even Rockstar makes good open world games).

 

[G00N3R7883]

I used to mainly just play FPSes and RPGs, and whilst those genres are still my favourites, the rise of digital distribution, Steam sales and Youtube videos has encouraged me to branch out into new genres. Its so easy these days to watch videos of games that other people say are interesting, get a feeling for if I think I'll enjoy it, and take a chance at a bargain price. If I don't like the game, I didn't really lose anything.

 

[sXeth]

Well, I used to be big into JRPGs on SNES. Somewhere in the transition to 3d I mostly fell off that train, even more so as they started having to strip away the tactical layers to have you control 1 dude or in full real-time combat. Anime art style isn't really my cup of tea either, and the genre seems more enmeshed in that (maybe it always was and the graphics limits made it less obvious, but whatever).

Real time strategy was another one. Warcraft 1 & 2. Most of the Command and Conquer series. Around Starcraft I started finding them less interesting. The hero elements creeping in more strongly was one thing, micromanaging started to become more popular. Mostly I find that they try and incorporate strategy that is either insanely twitch heavy micromanaging, or wholly impractical in real-time.

RPG's. Mostly because they've schismed completely into deliberately obtuse and over-complicated. Or terrible gameplay bolted to a sotry (which is often not nearly good enough to carry the gameplay)

 

[Xprimentyl]

Yeah. I went from having varied tastes and appreciating almost anything to disliking and being sick of almost everything. I've become pretty particular about what I want. I barely have the patience anymore.

I?ll second this. In the early 2000s with my Original Xbox, I?d try pretty much anything. Then during my Xbox 360/PS3 era, my tastes refined and I pretty much stuck within the FPS and RPG/Adventure genres but played broadly within them. Then, with the Xbox One, I started to see gaming as a one-trick pony. The newness wore off it started to feel like I?d played all these ?new? games before, except now, they?re largely broken and partial re-skinned messes meted out a DLC and microtransaction at a time. Excitement turned into cynicism, and I don?t see any return to form any time soon. When you?ve got 2-3 companies making Call of Duties, a new developer who decided the Halo franchise which traditionally sells itself needed pay-to-win elements and monopolizing publishers actively seeking out promising developers to consume and conform to produce marketable mediocrity, you can pretty much see the writing on the wall: it?s no longer about the products; it?s about the profits.

I agree. It's gotten to the point where I play shallow games whose design philosophies I have little respect for, simply to pass the time. For the most part, though, I barely buy or look at any games anymore. They rarely make them with real love. It's almost all highly derivative mass-marketed crap.

Tell me about it. Dark Souls is the only game I?ve played since October other than Sudoku on my phone.

I know it seems like I bring this game up in every other thread, but this is exactly why Playdead?s INSIDE is such a perfect game to me. Every aspect of it was crafted with the care, passion, and dedication that?ve been all but lost on most publishers/developers nowadays. It says something significant when a 3 hour long, single-player, 2.5D side-scrolling game with no dialogue and mechanics simple enough to be handled by an NES controller can outshine basically every, modern-day multi-million dollar AAA affair with tacked-on multiplayer and microtransactions cranked out by the greedy and soulless suits at EA, Ubisoft or any other publisher/developer whose primary source of relevance/income is the same game they?ve been releasing and re-releasing for years just with the next higher integer or some edgy word beginning with ?Re-? slapped onto its title.

If there were more truly unique and memorable experiences like INSIDE to be found out there, I could readily find myself engaged with and invigorated by gaming again, but as it stands, for every INSIDE, there?s a hundred Call of Duties and a THOUSAND wannabes that do nothing but more of what?s been done and re-done for the better part of a decade now. I?m sure there are diamonds in the rough to be found out there, but seeing as ?the rough? is a waist-deep pile of horse shit, I?d rather not look for them.

 

[aozgolo]

My tastes have become a bit more refined. I can still play games I loved growing up but may not be able to enjoy or appreciate a game of a similar genre with similar level of depth. An example, I love classic turn-based JRPGs like Dragon Quest, Earthbound, Final Fantasy, etc. but I don't tend to really sit through many of the "throwback" type of JRPGs that attempt to emulate them like Dragon Fantasy, Undertale, or the dozens and dozens of commercial RPGMaker games. I can appreciate what they are trying to do, and part of me wants to play them, I even own them, but they just don't pull me in for whatever reason, but I'll happily replay Earthbound for the 12th time. I also still enjoy turn-based JRPGs, but ones where the mechanics have similarly evolved and aren't purely just a nostalgia throwback.

 

[CaitSeith]

FPS. I used to like them. But now it kinda bores me when you only go around shooting and listening to dialogues. I prefer first-person puzzle games now.

 

[chrissx2]

My taste keeps changing. If I play some genre too much, I get tired of it and look for something else. Sometimes it's caused by the direction that the specific genre takes (racing games). After a long break, I get back to those games and learn to enjoy them again.
Generally I moved from simple mindless games to more complex and deeper ones. Now I'm stuck somewhere between. I love simple FPS games like UT, Quake, but simple RPGs bore me to death.

I never said to myself - "ok I'm done with this genre". I'm always open to find new types of games and revisit the old ones.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I used to not really like fighting games until UMVC3 came out and I bought it just because it had Phoenix Wright as a playable character. A few years later and i'm a huge BlazBlue fan and i'm super hype for the PC re-release of UMVC3 this year.

I used to not like JRPGs until I played Persona 4 and now I think that game is still the best game ever made but i'm happy that it seems like Atlus has stopped milking it before it died. As good as Persona 4 Arena was, it still had a negative impact on the story of Persona 4 retroactively to me. Nevermind the seemingly reckless nature of extra content for content's sake in P4 Golden. The fact that the Accomplice Ending is even in that game pisses me off to this day.

I'm also kinda done with the Ace Attorney series sadly. Like the first three games were excellent and are the perfect example on how to write a trilogy correctly. Then it kinda just... slowly got worse game by game. Seriously why is Phoenix still around? His arc is done. It's over. Give the other characters time to shine, especially in Dual Destinies where Athena got fuckin' shunted to the side for the whole game when she's the most interesting thing in the game.

Oh and I used to hate voices in Visual Novels, now I see these VNs i've already played released on Steam without voices and i'm like "this is literally unplayable"

The voiceless version of G-Senjo is stupid because the voices actually have some significance to the mystery story and for some dumbass reason, Umineko on Steam has no voices in a SOUND Novel. You have many scenes with 5+ characters talking together and I have no idea how you're meant to understand who says what. Thankfully the fans modded in the PS3 version with the (imo) superior art and full voices.

Like experiencing Umineko without the witches cackling at you is just wrong. Pretty much missing 50% of the content.

 

[Ender910_v1legacy]

Eh... only slightly. My taste has certainly become more refined in a few ways, but I've usually had a good idea of what I found to be good/preferable in a game. If I've become somewhat pickier over the years it's largely because developers have continued to rehash the same gameplay mechanics and design decisions that I found to be lacking in the first place.

For instance, current-day/modern military shooters have never interested me due to just how limiting the setting is for creative and unique gameplay (and this has only gotten worse as developers rehash the exact same mechanics out over and over). I'm not however entirely averse to shooters that utilize traditional firearms, but the setting needs to at least have some to mix things up a bit, IE sci-fi/fantasy elements or WWI/WWII with somewhat different options in firearms.

Starcraft and other more traditional RTS games are another thing I've never really found satisfying due to the high emphasis on "econ" and the nearly limitless supply of units. Additionally, the rather... crude manner in which unit abilities and management are often handled makes the combat feel particularly artificial when compared against some other game series' such as Total War or Men of War.

And JRPG's have never really interested me beyond maybe a very small few in the SNES era. I really can't take a game seriously that doesn't at least allow for positioning to be an important or useful factor in combat. The art style's also always been something of a hindrance, so even if the gameplay's improved somewhat in more recent years, the narrative is still not going to be something I'd likely take to.

 

[Nuuu]

I can't say my taste has "changed" so much as I have figured out what I like.

My young self didn't really look at whether a game was good or what genre it was, I just bought whatever looked pretty or cool. This typically led to either a bunch of adventure games, AAA titles or movie/TV-show tie ins. It was only a couple a years ago that I realized how much I could dislike certain genres after I quit Skyrim in 15 hours, was pretty "meh" on COD:BO, and can't even stay interested in any of my old Gamecube games for more than a few hours.

Thanks to Steam and Youtube, I eventually realized that I enjoyed more fast-paced shooters, well made puzzle games, a hint of stealth, and most things with co-op elements.
I've met a great friend recently who has introduced me to the fighting genre. I still can't stand the arcade-style 1v1 games like Street Fighter or Tekken, but Bayonetta 2 and Metal Gear Rising top my list of favorites.

 

[Nazulu]

I did a complete 180 when I turned 22, shifting from mostly multi-player online games to single player only games. Might have something to do with my free time getting cut shorter and shorter

 

[Rangaman]

Well, I used to want anything and everything Nintendo...glad I'm out of that phase. I was interested in MMS and Halo for a while. Again, I'd rather not talk about it.

Nowadays I've gone back to platformers and I'm starting to get into RPGs and 4X Games. There are still genres I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole (RTS and post-FF7 JRPGs) but I like to think I'm more open-minded than I was before.