Modern Gamers

As a 35yr old who started gaming when my Dad brought home a C64 I'm of the opinion that games are better nowadays than ever. Yes there's key titles from every generation that stand out but I'm very happy with the current state of the industry.

Today, The bombast is more on the graph than the coding.
And todays a lot of Kinematic scene that you have to view all the time. In some games you play more as an actor in a movie has you already known the outcome.
In the 80s a game at its release rarely needed a patch.
At his release it was completed !

I remember company as Mircoprose their military simulator was more than realist. And what to say about "Grand Prix legend" by Sierra, another company has the quality of irreproachable product...
Today the games it the store half finished or half-game with a lot of Dlc.

In the nostalgia for the 80s the good maid music who had a soul, the cheap beer at these times 20$ you tripped a whole evening with a nice girls....:D
 
I can't remember where I read it but I did see an interesting article about how younger gamers <25 yrs are rarely completing games or finishing them and quickly getting bored before moving on to the next game. I struggled to relate to the concept and so set about thinking why it might be the case.
As one of those younger gamers (22 next week), I'd speculate that's it because a lot of games aren't all that great. Speaking for myself, I've never finished a number of the ps2 games I own because they weren't very good, or they were simply terrible. Why wade through muck just to get even more muck?
 
As one of those younger gamers (22 next week), I'd speculate that's it because a lot of games aren't all that great. Speaking for myself, I've never finished a number of the ps2 games I own because they weren't very good, or they were simply terrible. Why wade through muck just to get even more muck?

I agree with Machival. Combine the rate the industry has grown with the amount of clones that have infiltrated the market with bad and non progressive ideas. Take a visit through Steam's store and be amazed at the vast amount of games that are blatant rip offs of other more inventive game designer's ideas.

If we had anything near to the amount of games we have now for the Atari (back in the day), we would've been in the same situation as modern day gamers face; Saturated with choices that sadly aren't necessarily good games just because they copied someone else's good idea.

At the age of 31, I often find myself in the situation where the game reads good on (digital) paper, but fails to be worthy to hold my attention so I never end up finishing a game. I find this a combination of two things,

1) My "standards" with games have changed over the years. Overall, I have had less time to play them, therefore the games I do play are something that must capture my attention. Whereas in my younger years a game was both entertainment and a fascination with the technology itself. I think having moved past the "wonder years", the fascination aspect has faded a bit.

2) My "tastes" have changed. Games I might've been highly interested in ten years ago, are nowhere as interesting as in the past. A game with the same premise as "Quake" which I consider one of my favorite games of the past, would not even hold my attention for a moment. Again that is due to expectations in part as well, but also the kind of games I looked for back then are different as well.
 
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The driver of this phenomenon is 'culture'. Specifically culture that is controlled by our modern media.

This is also working in conjunction with the very rich that have been on a mission (and somewhat coordinated) over recent decades to 'encourage' the reduction or lowering of standards of education amongst the not rich.

So it is not any one persons fault that things like Big Brother exist or that many of our 'youth' seem fascinated by which Kardashian has been vajazzled or obsessed with Facebook etc. This is what they have been trained to find of cultural importance to them as it keeps them 'mostly harmless'.

The 'streamlining' that is popular in modern game dev (that i prefer to call 'dumbing down') is part of this culture change. We are less patient, more easily distracted, have more to distract us etc, that games need to be simple to more easily engage the audience. Big explosions, fancy graphics but 'lite' on actual depth of content etc.

There is a deeper discussion that could be had on this, but i'm sure this is enough to set the ferrets amidst the hens ;)
 
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I am 33 and most of games really don't interest me. This is only gaming forum I have visited so much in last 10 years. I think there's even less than 5 games that really have made me revisit them again and again. Surprise, those usually are also classics of other players. Elite games have always been "wow" moment for me, especially when I rise up from atmosphere in FFE for first time, or when my childhood friend showed me how docking is done in Elite on ZX Spectrum.

Civilization, Alpha Centauri, SimCity...Only from interactive FPS classic Half-life/Half-life 2 holds ground for me. I just recently started actively support Steam games on Linux. Bought Half-Life 2 with eps, and yeah, magic is still there, there are very few games who even tried to emulate that feeling Valve achieved in those games.

Said that, there are some hope. I was skeptical, but Don't Starve and Kerbal Space Program has shown to me that there's still hidden gems and geniuses ready to unleash their gaming ideas to the world.

As always with entertainment there's lot of "showelware", and there's some really good games. But as always those are rare.

p.s. about attention span - not only youngsters suffer from that. I personally force myself to avoid certain information channels time after time to regain some sanity.
 
Culture shift towards gaming and time management. A lot of "quick" games are flooding the market as our attention spans are bombarded with strains on our time.

How many of us own games which we have played very little, purely because we love the idea of spending all day playing them, but don't have the time to do it. FTL on the iPad is a godsend for me at the moment, travelling with work so much.

But in general I just don't have the time to invest in all the new titles and also as I have aged, my gaming preferences have changed.

As ffor the games were better back in the good old days as Sunset alluded too, well yes and no. We all remember fondly the great old titles... but there was a lot of tat as well and a lot of games that whilst they didn't need patching to play, were bug ridden.

And a lot of the modern game issues for me are due to Publishers demands. The production and release cycles of games very much mirror software implementation projects I have been on. You have budgets and dates you are expected to hit and you fix the issues later. What happens of course is that the teams are ramped down post release and fixes take longer as a result. That is the nature of the beast and exacerbated when you have a publisher interested in profit maximisation and moving on to the next big thing. This in turn is driven by customer demand, so our own impatience is just as much to blame.

Just look at the ranting here sometimes for faster progress, yet at the same time we want a product that is flawless. Customer expectations are often unrealistic.

The internet has also brought out the best and the worst in gamers. The rush for Everyone Online all the time and all being the hero like we were when offline has spawned a plethora of dull repetitive MMO's, yet we lap them up because, well I don't really know.

If I want to hang around one place doing the same thing all day, i.e. grinding, I can just stick to my day job, at least I get paid for that.

As a result, how do I expect to play this game? Yeah Online All, maybe IronMan, but at times purely in a Co_op mode with friends, because for me the best gaming experience remains when i am playing with my friends. The social interaction with people I like, banter, shared memories.
 
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