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Gaming was like breathing. It was the biggest part of my life as a teenager, one of my priorities as a college student, and eventually one of my most expensive “hobbies” as a young professional.
Then all of a sudden, after thousands of hours spent playing across genres and platforms, boredom hit me hard for the very first time in my early thirties. Some of my favorite games soon gave me the impression of being terribly long. I couldn’t help but notice all the repeating tropes and similarities in game design between franchises.
I figured it was just a matter of time before I found the right game to stimulate my interest again, but time continued to go by and nothing changed.
Is it that games have failed to innovate, or that real life is ultimately more engaging?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @07:53PM (8 children)
Plain and simple grandpa--your reaction time is crap these days. It's a young person's game. /sarc
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday January 07 2019, @07:58PM (4 children)
Just got my ass systematically kicked by the Nephews at Smash over the Xmas break.
I could blame age and reflexes, but having a full-time job and family, which prevent me from spending as many hours practicing and learning tricks, was probably the biggest factor.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 07 2019, @08:33PM
My brother and I used to both play Need For Speed independently, but when we started competing with one another we both pushed to much more extreme levels of performance - stuff that would have been too boring to bother with trying to get right alone was suddenly worth the effort just to "beat" the other sibling.
Lots of (the better) games have a wide margin between casual good feeling play and ultimate high scoring. If the Nephews have been trying to outdo each other, it's no wonder that a casual newbie would get creamed by them.
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday January 08 2019, @01:18AM
Yeah, the job thing always took top billing with my time too.
I considered playing games so unproductive when I had my projects to work on, but admittedly a lot of my priorities changed when the micromanagers took over, and the investors made it quite clear they valued micromanagement more than me by making me subordinate to one.
I had a few older games, but several of the newer games just caused me grief with special requirements and limitations, and I gave up on them for the same reasons I gave up on purchased music... It wasn't the fee, rather it was compliance with business talk, enforced by my own machine against me. Especially things like time limits or requiring additional commitments from me for additional components or drivers.
I hold the least important part of the modern executive business marketing paradigm, that is, the desire to purchase. That is so less important to business as their need to control me by coding my own machine to act as their enforcement and ad delivery agent.
This
So, I am one who lost interest in it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:27AM (1 child)
I used to beat the crap out of teenagers in CS:GO even with my slow reflexes by being better at reading my enemies. Then one day some asshole started abusing me for my rather thin voice, and when he failed to provoke me, spent rest of the sulking and not contributing to the team until in the last round, when I was the only one alive, I was kicked by aforementioned teenagers. Turns out gaming is not what it used to be.
1. FPS games are all multiplayer now and if they have a single player campaign, it is bad and is likely a tutorial.
2. Strategy games don't have much innovation left. Old games are still holding on, though.
3. The monetization is so in-your-face these days that the only people not annoyed by it are those who haven't earned a dime themselves.
4. Single player games are all open-world and open world fatigue is real. Plus a lot of these open-world games are high production quality turds.
I suffered from the same problem as described in TFS around 2 years ago. Just last night I installed Witcher 3 on my Manjaro box (THANK YOU VALVE!!!) and I played it for 3 hours straight while constantly trying to quit. So it may have something to do with fatigue also.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday January 10 2019, @03:01AM
Hear, hear.
I really miss the atmosphere and plot of old solo FPSes, modern online multiplayer stuff is just so much shooting at things for the sake of shooting at things, with maybe some paramilitary tactical coordination if you're playing something team-based with a good team. Yeah, deathmatch is a fun way to kill some time sometimes, but it has precious little staying power. Especially when your opponents (and your team, if you have one) are usually just random people thrown together by the server algorithms. Where's the fun in glorious battle if there is no greater goal, and no celebration afterwards with your friends? It's just so much violence-porn.
Though there was co-op mode - not nearly enough games had it, but being able to play through a well developed and atmospheric single-player campaign with a real friend or three by your side (not just whatever random assholes happened to be online at the time)? Taking breaks for drinking and carrying on. That was glorious. I think I spent the better part of a year playing System Shock 2 with my best friend, 4-8 hours most every Saturday.
I've actually found a whole lot of enjoyment in Rogue-likes in recent years, and games inspired by them. Usually simple graphics (often using nothing more than standard text characters), randomly generated worlds, and a gossamer-thin plot, but often with a surprising amount of gameplay depth. And permadeath that usually ends a game within a few hours, but makes the whole experience far more engaging for the risk. POWDER is one I'd recommend as a starting point, if anyone cares (starter tip: much of the dungeon wildlife is actually non-hostile, unless you attack first. Also you can "save scum" to resurrect your fallen hero, though you'll no longer be eligible for the (offline) high score list).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 07 2019, @08:26PM
That and beginning arthritis.
Aging sucks, and it sneaks up on you sooner and quicker than you'd ever imagined.
(Score: 2) by mth on Monday January 07 2019, @09:48PM
I thought I might be getting too slow when I struggled in Hollow Knight. But then I thought back to the platform games I played when I was young and usually I either used cheat codes or took a long time to finish them. So I think I always sucked at platforming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:15AM
Reaction time is not affected much by age. I have top spots in the casual games and even some duel won against pros and I am almost 50.
What slows down a lot after 35: the time to adapt to new games.
As for the topic, the games seems slow because they are. Get into emulation of pre 1984 games, or in the FPS indie/classic ones where no hand holding or equalizing happens. Some free FPS games for linux are available too. The ideal game has no intro, and a slightly better player will beat you every time. If you don't like that, go for the special snowflake game du jour.