What happened to games being fun?

[Signa]

To answer the title and not the OP:
When they started making games for money over fun. Thanks Kotick.

I guess I don't play a lot of online games to really feel like everyone around me isn't playing for fun. The few that I do play (mainly TF2) are populated by people who are having fun, so I've just not experienced what the OP is talking about. It probably helps I'm not playing Halo or MW2 or some similar jock-magnet FPS fragfest.

 

[Mcface]

Do you not remember counter strike?
Games in terms of fun as you describe it haven't changed at all really.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

This is why I'm glad I play in a party with people I get along with.

 

[Thaius]

That's just people being stupid. It is perfectly possible to have a competitive focus (as opposed to, "I'mma screw around because it's okay as long as I have fun") without all that crap. Unfortunately, most people in the world are idiots and douchebags, and that really comes out online.

 

[Daymo]

Don't get me wrong games are still fun but like when you play online it gets so competitive with pointless name calling, yelling, and swearing. What happened? Games were meant to played with friends to have fun with and just laugh and enjoy it. Question to everyone is what happened to that?

Halo happened.

I wouldn't say Halo happened, I would say counter-strike happened. I went to a lan place that used to be just down the road and played there for the first time, I told my teammates I was new and they all were complaing and bitching about having noob on their team and stuff like this was some super serious tournament and not a lan place anyone could play at.

 

[helldragonX]

I know where the OP is coming from, on Halo: Reach I have gotten so tired of getting shot/melee'd in the back by teammates, just cause I got to the sniper/ghost/what have you first.
It has gotten to the point where if someone does that I will turn around and shoot them in the face or run their ass over respectively.I don't ever care if I get booted anymore, they do that, then their gonna die.

OT: It prolly has to do with there being little to no consequences.

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

Watch Extra Credit to get some insight but short story: Games are more expensive and so they aren't as long and game producers are less willing to try new things so games are mostly just copies of what works.

 

[00slash00]

Don't get me wrong games are still fun but like when you play online it gets so competitive with pointless name calling, yelling, and swearing. What happened? Games were meant to played with friends to have fun with and just laugh and enjoy it. Question to everyone is what happened to that?

THANK YOU for this.im not crazy about the current generation of games because single player seems to be becoming less and less important. the call of duty series is pretty much dead to me and i wont pay more than $20 for the games now, because the campaign is why im buying it and i know that will be finished in an afternoon. i dont find it fun to play online matches, it gets boring for me really fast

 

[Criquefreak]

I'd blame bad parenting for the horrible experiences of online gaming. Failiure to learn proper coping methods, a vocabularly without words greater than five letters, allowing immature people (particularly children) to access competitive gameplay, self-image derived largely from feeling superior to others, underdeveloped social skills, quite likely some degree of mental or emotional abuse, and disturbingly high trend of proper discipline and consequences for harmful actions.

Anonymity is also a powerful contributor, as many of us have learned from surfing the web. Humans are far more susceptible to feeling guilt if they have the bare minimum of witnessing the body language reactions of their audience, but nameless, faceless entities simply are hard for many people to comprehend as actual people.

Also doesn't help that zero-sum games create enmity between players. For those whose definition of fun is purely about the win, it can be viewed as having fun robbed from them by someone else. To a certain degree, when there is ranking and achievements being pushed further out of reach by each loss and the player's motivations are keyed towards that, there is a certain degree of truth to loss of fun in those circumstances.

I was taught quite a while back that the litmus test for any game and any feature within a game is: "Is this fun? (And how is it fun.)" For online gaming with strangers, someone clearly didn't do their research in answering that question, resulting in the abundance of ruined game play experiences due to torrential foul audio spewed by poor players.

 

[YgdraTwighr]

Looks like everyone agrees that the real culprit here is an over-developed sense of competition and other mental malfunctions, coupled with Penny Arcades Fuckwad Formula. With online First Person Shooter lobbies at a higher risk of being un-fun.

Everyone is also in agreement, more or less, that the cure to lack of fun in game is to find games that are not so much "Us vs. Them", and more like "Us Vs. The World".
Games like the Left 4 Dead(s) and Online Co-op in Gears of War(s) and Resident Evil 5 promote a sense of togetherness, you may not like someone in the lobby, but you're going to have to work together to get the job done.

And if you still need to get your Team Deathmatch on? Play titles that aren't in the limelight anymore. Less people on a server should correlate to less douche bags right? And the people who are still playing these titles are probably there for the fun factor, and not to give other players grief.

TL,DR: Avoid FPS lobbies, go online co-op, that's what I say!

 

[jamescorck]

Don't get the game wrong, games are still lots of fun! It's some people online who are not and ruin the experience for you.

Granted, I never had that happening to me, so I don't think games are not fun anymore.

 

[Nieroshai]

Why I don't play online unless it's a no-mic server.

 

[L-J-F]

Games were meant to played with friends to have fun with and just laugh and enjoy it.

Yeah, not really. I think pigeonholing games as "fun" or anything like that ends up with them being very limited in scope. In fact most of the games I play and enjoy I wouldn't pick "fun" as the best description. Games can be anything really, as to the online experience, well that's just humans being what they do best - be competitive and dicks to each other xD

 

[Bluexstriker]

Here's a good solution. Find a server for a game. Now if it has a forum, go lurk that for a while. Find out names, establish yourself, get to know people, or at least their personas. Now, if they have a server, find a thread or something, and find out times, join in organised matches, and just get to the playing times. Fast forward a bit. If you can stick with a few servers like these, with regulars and forum goers, than eventually you'll get recognised and everyone will know each other. This can be a very good thing, and contrary to popular belief, you can have a good bit of fun with a bunch of people you haven't met in real life, but generally know, it can rival a good LAN match. Try it out. It can take a while, and find a good server, but if you're a regular, you can generally get along with most people, at least the othe regulars.

Sorry for going on there, but it's a good sign to find that not everyone's a whiny 12 year old.

 

[HijiriOni]

Don't get me wrong games are still fun but like when you play online it gets so competitive with pointless name calling, yelling, and swearing. What happened? Games were meant to played with friends to have fun with and just laugh and enjoy it. Question to everyone is what happened to that?

Halo happened.

I wouldn't say Halo happened, I would say counter-strike happened. I went to a lan place that used to be just down the road and played there for the first time, I told my teammates I was new and they all were complaing and bitching about having noob on their team and stuff like this was some super serious tournament and not a lan place anyone could play at.

Oh I was replying more in the sense that almost all new games are trying to be like halo. But yeah having a bunch of elitist types wrecks a LAN session. Last time I did a LAN was Gears of War over 2 360s in 2 on 2 games. I'd never played GoW before, guess who learned he's a real bastard with a chainsaw. What's funnier is I'm more talented at being "bait" my partner was flat raping everyone cause they saw me and started shooting at me, he proceeded to pick their heads off with the explosive bow.

But yeah, gaming stopped being fun when developers started focusing on making profits only. The high development costs these days mean companies aren't as able to take risks, less risks means less variety, means less innovation and fun.

 

[Wouter Heyndrickx]

this also happens in Maple Story and its private servers.
people always think that, because they have a higher level or more rebirths or are super donors, they are superior to the other players.

like anyone in a job interview will say "Well, it seems you have a lot of rebirths in -name private server-, you'll get the job." chances that will happen are less than zero.

(yes, I'm directing this to you, lowlifes in the private servers *points*)

 

[hyperhammy]

Don't get me wrong games are still fun but like when you play online it gets so competitive with pointless name calling, yelling, and swearing. What happened? Games were meant to played with friends to have fun with and just laugh and enjoy it. Question to everyone is what happened to that?

that is splitscreen play, which is dying. its following the multiplayer cash truck now. Only PC has any sort of face to face play anymore. consoles abandoned that.

hmm... the pc never had face to face play, unless you mean lan play.
Nothing can beat a good old fashion match of splitscreen deathmatch.

 

[Nobodyman]

I still think games are fun, but I usually don't play mulitplayer games. My experiances with them are usually hit or miss. Sometimes I have fun, but other times the online assbags take all the fun out of it.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

They haven't. They've stopped being fun for you, but that's a different question.

They've become more competitive because that's now the demographic many games are targeting. You don't like it, I don't really like it, other people really like it. There's plenty of games for everybody, it's natural that not every game appeals to you. Instead of demanding that they do, just seek out games that do appeal to you.

 

[imnot]

Thats why I only usew singleplayer or splitscreen.