Identity

[trickyfingers]

My daddy was a gamer and raised me on Vectrex and NES and the games I grew up with were crazily difficult and unforgiving. Gaming being as mainstream as it is today means the budgets available to devs has skyrocketed. The trade-off is that in most cases the amount of time and money needed to deliver a product that can compete with current expectations is a much riskier investment than it was 20 years ago. The need for a return on the investment means some crazier, more innovative ideas will inevitably get passed over in favor of some generic explodey shooter or half-hearted remake thats guaranteed to sell.

I am most definitely one of those people who grumbles about the good ol days, when beating a game really meant something. When I was a kid, if you were on the very last boss and you used up your 3 lives, that was it. Game Over. And we liked it that way.

That is why I play old-school indie games.

The rise of regenerating health and quicksaving makes my blood boil...

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

There are people who play video games. The number of these people have been growing since video games have become more of a mainstream thing.

And then there are people who go to websites, scroll through countless forums, and degress about how the gaming industry is starting to become more and more "casual" while they are beginning to alienate their "core" fans. (That would be You, just in case my point wasn't caught)

It's just like alot of other parts of culture out there. There are people who like to go and see a movie every once in a while. And there are people who evaluate movies, and study movies, and make movies, and critize movies every day of their life. Everybody has something they are more focused on then the average Joe Schmoe.