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[Fess]

No one should tell what games you should or shouldn’t like especially from some random people on internet….fuck everyone else, play what you like.

Yeah I always do that tbh. 600+ hours in the most hated game on the planet, No Man’s Sky, 100+ hours on the unpatched launch version. Meanwhile, I want my 25 hours back from falling asleep playing everybody’s favorite Baldur’s Gate 3 with ten thousand GOTY awards.

I want demos to come back. Like it was on XBLA where every game had a demo and when you reached a certain spot you could buy it to continue. There need to be a way to test games cheap because judging a game’s quality by looking at review scores isn’t working.

 

[GymWolf]

If i ever gonna feel like op i'm just gonna stop playing all together.
Yes, videogames are still a lot of fun for me.

 

[tronied]

Up until recently I would have probably said not really... however, my love of gaming has been reignited with Marvels Spider-Man and Avowed. It's been a while since I've felt invested in a game, so it's nice to have that again.

 

[0neAnd0nly]

First - appreciate all the responses and the suggestions. I don't want to quote every single thing because I could quote nearly everything - but I appreciate so many of these replies.

Second, I want to clear the air a bit because I think some people sorely misrepresented or misunderstood what I said. I still enjoy playing games. Not as much time these days, but I do still play. And I ENJOY it. But that isn't necessarily what I mean. Games have a different cloth to them now, like much of (mostly) western media. They seem to be very close to the past generation without as much freshness or "wow" that we use to get Gen to gen, and innovation in combat, gameplay, etc. Has seem to hit a serious dry spot for me. There was a lot of (not to overuse the word) FUN in the past. I remover going from NES to N64. HOLY CRAP look at Mario 64 Compared to the NES Mario Bros. Wow. Vibrant, fun, Inventive. Goldeneye - SAME.

Then the following gen was the same. Major step up, boom all of a sudden we have GTA 3, MIDNIGHT CLUB, Dynasty Warriors featuring mass scale and combat. Amazing! Fun, even if not your genre. Whatever.

PS3 /360 was a similar leap. KZ2 was a console mic drop. Warhawk I remember feeling so much ecstasy from playing. You could fly, drive, run around, whatever you wanted. Playing against tons of people, like nothing console gaming had felt before. Batman Arkham asylum blew my mind when I played the demo at gamestop in Atlanta, GA on vacation. Uncharted 2 felt like a peak moment in adventure gaming. Something epic right from the beginning of it. Turning the corner type of game.

Since then, ps4 - > 5 has felt like cruise control. Nearly everything is ND inspired over dramatic Hollywood style, car games in large feel dreadful and dated (NFS hasn't been fun for years, feels dumbed down substantially), GTA and forza have stalled. Remember Auto Modelista for Ps2, anybody!? What an inventive game! Physics wonky but MAN was it something cool to play!

As I said in the OP, this isn't a FULL blanket statement. There are still gems, and I mentioned stuff like Astro Bot. CDProjekt seems to do the old school "what we want" style. It's out there, but so much of the former innovation and freshness seems dry now. Everything seems corporatized and safe.

And there are reasons for that, objectively, and some of you have touched on that. The jump from development cost from Ps2 to end of ps3/ start of 4 era was MASSIVE. In my last meeting when I worked in the industry, they hands down blamed r*/ GTA and showed a graph (lol).

I just feel like so much of the uniqness of the industry has fallen flat. That doesn't mean it isn't still enjoyable, but it feels less... Fun.

It doesn't even have to be exclusive to the software. How many awesome N64 were released? I had the Gold Version from TrU. Clear Ps2, anybody? Still own my pokemon Gameboy color today. It just felt FUN. Watching retro game hunting in Japan really hits me in the feels recently. The box art is SO FRIGGIN GOOD. I still have many of the boxes for mine from childhood, man it was exciting. The bland stuff today... EH.

Hope that sort of clarifies.

The last decade, the games that stood out the most for me were; The Last Guardian, Breath of the Wild, Rocket League (at the beginning), LBP, CarX. Just miss that feeling. I also miss seeing the crazy releases of consoles and the random box art on the shelf leading me to buy a game I knew nothing about among a sea of never ending releases.



Some of this is no doubt due to changing life priorities, and I acknowledge that. Nostalgia has affect as well, no doubt. But something does indeed feel different for me that I think is unrelated to any of that - but hey, who knows. Maybe I am in the minority here!

Have a good day, everybody! Appreciate the convo!

 

[Toots]

Games ain't fun anymore, we only play them because it's our duty as console war soldiers.
Below is us waiting for another DEI drama to mine until exhaustion or collapse.

We chose this fate by the way. Maybe choosing another is also up to us ?

 

[Fess]

First - appreciate all the responses and the suggestions. I don't want to quote every single thing because I could quote nearly everything - but I appreciate so many of these replies.

Second, I want to clear the air a bit because I think some people sorely misrepresented or misunderstood what I said. I still enjoy playing games. Not as much time these days, but I do still play. And I ENJOY it. But that isn't necessarily what I mean. Games have a different cloth to them now, like much of (mostly) western media. They seem to be very close to the past generation without as much freshness or "wow" that we use to get Gen to gen, and innovation in combat, gameplay, etc. Has seem to hit a serious dry spot for me. There was a lot of (not to overuse the word) FUN in the past. I remover going from NES to N64. HOLY CRAP look at Mario 64 Compared to the NES Mario Bros. Wow. Vibrant, fun, Inventive. Goldeneye - SAME.

Then the following gen was the same. Major step up, boom all of a sudden we have GTA 3, MIDNIGHT CLUB, Dynasty Warriors featuring mass scale and combat. Amazing! Fun, even if not your genre. Whatever.

PS3 /360 was a similar leap. KZ2 was a console mic drop. Warhawk I remember feeling so much ecstasy from playing. You could fly, drive, run around, whatever you wanted. Playing against tons of people, like nothing console gaming had felt before. Batman Arkham asylum blew my mind when I played the demo at gamestop in Atlanta, GA on vacation. Uncharted 2 felt like a peak moment in adventure gaming. Something epic right from the beginning of it. Turning the corner type of game.

Since then, ps4 - > 5 has felt like cruise control. Nearly everything is ND inspired over dramatic Hollywood style, car games in large feel dreadful and dated (NFS hasn't been fun for years, feels dumbed down substantially), GTA and forza have stalled. Remember Auto Modelista for Ps2, anybody!? What an inventive game! Physics wonky but MAN was it something cool to play!

As I said in the OP, this isn't a FULL blanket statement. There are still gems, and I mentioned stuff like Astro Bot. CDProjekt seems to do the old school "what we want" style. It's out there, but so much of the former innovation and freshness seems dry now. Everything seems corporatized and safe.

And there are reasons for that, objectively, and some of you have touched on that. The jump from development cost from Ps2 to end of ps3/ start of 4 era was MASSIVE. In my last meeting when I worked in the industry, they hands down blamed r*/ GTA and showed a graph (lol).

I just feel like so much of the uniqness of the industry has fallen flat. That doesn't mean it isn't still enjoyable, but it feels less... Fun.

It doesn't even have to be exclusive to the software. How many awesome N64 were released? I had the Gold Version from TrU. Clear Ps2, anybody? Still own my pokemon Gameboy color today. It just felt FUN. Watching retro game hunting in Japan really hits me in the feels recently. The box art is SO FRIGGIN GOOD. I still have many of the boxes for mine from childhood, man it was exciting. The bland stuff today... EH.

Hope that sort of clarifies.

The last decade, the games that stood out the most for me were; The Last Guardian, Breath of the Wild, Rocket League (at the beginning), LBP, CarX. Just miss that feeling. I also miss seeing the crazy releases of consoles and the random box art on the shelf leading me to buy a game I knew nothing about among a sea of never ending releases.



Some of this is no doubt due to changing life priorities, and I acknowledge that. Nostalgia has affect as well, no doubt. But something does indeed feel different for me that I think is unrelated to any of that - but hey, who knows. Maybe I am in the minority here!

Have a good day, everybody! Appreciate the convo!

If you only take one thing away from this thread, let it be this:

Play it!



At the end it sounds like you know too much about upcoming games, nothing feels new and exciting, correct? What if you would take a break from gaming news on the internet?

You’ll know either way if something truly spectacular comes along in the AAA space when people outside of the core enthusiast bubble start talking about it.

Could spend time just playing instead, old favorites, indies. Or spice it up and install Unity and spend some time building your own game, just for fun, there a tons of guides,

 

[Pandawan]

Player engagement (not fun) is the main metric for modern developers. So yeah, it's rare to find a game that's actually fun these days. Some Nintendo games still prioritize fun, some indie games do too.

But most of the mainstream games these days are: the 100-hour open world Dark Souls 4 (called Elden Ring), 50+ hour dialogue simulators like KCD2, Spider Man games with bases, towers, and other generic city-wide grind, Monster Hunter, which is like a single-player MMO, even Zelda now is an open world game with towers and hundreds of shrines all over the map.

Astro Bot and Super Mario Odyssey are the only games from the last decade that I can think of that are fun. Maybe It Takes Two, but only for people who rarely play games because that game is so easy that it becomes not fun if you are familiar with games.

 

[Tomeru]

As an 80's child, sounds like a You issue.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

I comes to the conclusion that it's not about nostalgia, it's not about maturity or people... Because I play the PS1, SNES Dreamcast PS2 games and they're great... The problem is that now the games are very limited and boring... Just compare a game from before and now with Horizon... That game is boring garbage.

 

[Humdinger]

First - appreciate all the responses and the suggestions. I don't want to quote every single thing because I could quote nearly everything - but I appreciate so many of these replies.

Second, I want to clear the air a bit because I think some people sorely misrepresented or misunderstood what I said. I still enjoy playing games. Not as much time these days, but I do still play. And I ENJOY it. But that isn't necessarily what I mean. Games have a different cloth to them now, like much of (mostly) western media. They seem to be very close to the past generation without as much freshness or "wow" that we use to get Gen to gen, and innovation in combat, gameplay, etc. Has seem to hit a serious dry spot for me. There was a lot of (not to overuse the word) FUN in the past. I remover going from NES to N64. HOLY CRAP look at Mario 64 Compared to the NES Mario Bros. Wow. Vibrant, fun, Inventive. Goldeneye - SAME.

Then the following gen was the same. Major step up, boom all of a sudden we have GTA 3, MIDNIGHT CLUB, Dynasty Warriors featuring mass scale and combat. Amazing! Fun, even if not your genre. Whatever.

PS3 /360 was a similar leap. KZ2 was a console mic drop. Warhawk I remember feeling so much ecstasy from playing. You could fly, drive, run around, whatever you wanted. Playing against tons of people, like nothing console gaming had felt before. Batman Arkham asylum blew my mind when I played the demo at gamestop in Atlanta, GA on vacation. Uncharted 2 felt like a peak moment in adventure gaming. Something epic right from the beginning of it. Turning the corner type of game.

Since then, ps4 - > 5 has felt like cruise control. Nearly everything is ND inspired over dramatic Hollywood style, car games in large feel dreadful and dated (NFS hasn't been fun for years, feels dumbed down substantially), GTA and forza have stalled. Remember Auto Modelista for Ps2, anybody!? What an inventive game! Physics wonky but MAN was it something cool to play!

As I said in the OP, this isn't a FULL blanket statement. There are still gems, and I mentioned stuff like Astro Bot. CDProjekt seems to do the old school "what we want" style. It's out there, but so much of the former innovation and freshness seems dry now. Everything seems corporatized and safe.

And there are reasons for that, objectively, and some of you have touched on that. The jump from development cost from Ps2 to end of ps3/ start of 4 era was MASSIVE. In my last meeting when I worked in the industry, they hands down blamed r*/ GTA and showed a graph (lol).

I just feel like so much of the uniqness of the industry has fallen flat. That doesn't mean it isn't still enjoyable, but it feels less... Fun.

It doesn't even have to be exclusive to the software. How many awesome N64 were released? I had the Gold Version from TrU. Clear Ps2, anybody? Still own my pokemon Gameboy color today. It just felt FUN. Watching retro game hunting in Japan really hits me in the feels recently. The box art is SO FRIGGIN GOOD. I still have many of the boxes for mine from childhood, man it was exciting. The bland stuff today... EH.

Hope that sort of clarifies.

The last decade, the games that stood out the most for me were; The Last Guardian, Breath of the Wild, Rocket League (at the beginning), LBP, CarX. Just miss that feeling. I also miss seeing the crazy releases of consoles and the random box art on the shelf leading me to buy a game I knew nothing about among a sea of never ending releases.



Some of this is no doubt due to changing life priorities, and I acknowledge that. Nostalgia has affect as well, no doubt. But something does indeed feel different for me that I think is unrelated to any of that - but hey, who knows. Maybe I am in the minority here!

Have a good day, everybody! Appreciate the convo!

Yup, several things pop out here:

1. There isn't the "wow" factor anymore, because a lot of gaming feels like "been there, done that." I can relate. I think this is just a natural progression, unavoidable really. You have decades of experience playing games now. In earlier years, things felt novel - because they were new to you. But after decades of playing games, you've experienced those new mechanics, styles, stories, and game designs - it naturally starts to feel familiar, not so novel anymore. This is true of anything, though. If you read a thousand fantasy books, you will start to see the same themes, styles, tropes, characters, and stories occurring over and over again. It won't have the same novelty factor anymore. It will be harder to find the "wow, this feels fresh/new."

2. Graphics have hit a peak of diminishing returns. I think that is pretty well acknowledged. You just don't see the graphics breakthroughs that you did 20 years ago. That is just the reality.

3. You're not in the minority, or at least not in a small one. Many people have noticed that the quality of gaming, especially AAA gaming, has declined significantly since about 2012 or so, give or take. There are many articles and videos expressing this point of view, and many reasons for it (corporatization, increasing budgets, MTs, GaaS, wokery, etc.). There have been many threads on GAF about the subject. But people who lose interest in gaming tend to drift away from the forum or visit less, so you don't hear their voices much in threads like this. Self-selection bias. But no, you're hardly alone in your perspective.

 

[Northeastmonk]

There’s so much to play. There’s all these awesome collections, remasters, and retro re-releases. Terminator 2 gets a brand new 2D style game. There’s a lot of Arcade Archives releases. Idk what people want sometimes. It’s like you’re stuck in a Ubisoft press conference and that’s all you see.

There are exciting games released all the time.

 

[fart town usa]

They are, but I do think they can be harder to find if you aren't a big fan of modern AAA.

 

[elhav]

Usually it's not the games, it's your life that sucks now.

Games are just as fun now as they were before

 

[Lucifers Beard]

My current rotation consists of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Helldivers 2 and Le Man's Ultimate, and I'm having a ton of fun.

You probably need to just try sticking to the types of games you enjoy and sticking to them until exhaustion instead of just playing any "hot" new thing.

This is it. I've stopped playing games just because it's the thing that people are talking about, or because reviewers said it was good. The only thing I was finding was that I was spending money and playing them for just a couple hours before dropping them. If it doesn't look fun to me, then I'm not playing it, no matter how much buzz it gets.

I've been looking more at the indie scene and smaller budget titles that still look great, but are just way more focused on delivering a good time to the player rather than skimming us all for more money through micro transactions. There are so many good games out there, you just need to find what it is you actually enjoy.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

The fun died when Dreamcast died.

 

[omegasc]

Games are fun.

Gamers are jaded fucks.

If someone don't believe this to be true, check out the "Astro Bot pushes PS5 to the limits" thread.

 

[Dacvak]

Astro Bot was fun as hell. But I feel you, modern games are more “miss” in the fun department than “hit” imo.

I’ve been playing a shitload of retro over the last couple years, and the fun factor is absolutely unparalleled.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

There's still fun games but I'm still having more fun with modded Fallout and Elder Scroll games which are Morrowind, Skyrim, Fallout 3, NV, and FO4 way more than any other games since 2015. And will probably continue to be this way until Elder Scrolls VI comes.

 

[omegasc]

Astro Bot was fun as hell. But I feel you, modern games are more “miss” in the fun department than “hit” imo.

I’ve been playing a shitload of retro over the last couple years, and the fun factor is absolutely unparalleled.

I've been playing since the Atari, Intellivision, Odyssey era, and always had fun, every generation. There were times I preferred fighting games, RPG games, survival horror... but I always found my place.
Astro Bot is amazing, as is Astro's Playroom. It does push the hardware in some ways but just because it's not focused on hyper realistic graphics or follwing a state of the art tech checklist, some are dismissing it. The same probably happens to games that are fun, but people aren't even trying because it's not a blockbuster everyone is talking about, or "looks like a kid game".

 

[Bartski]

No, I hate videogames altogether. I drag myself through this hell playing them just to talk shit about them online, and tell everyone how they suck for not alligning with the correct definition of fun, born in the objectively better golden gaming days when I didn’t need sildenafil to get a boner

 

[Bieren]

I know as I got older, my gaming preferences changed a lot. Games I used to love playing, I don't care about in the least bit now. You need to mix it up and find something new. Not to mention, we can only have some many refreshes of the same IP before the changes are pointless and it's the same game at the core. So, you gotta try different things.

But, to be honest, part of the issue is how toxic the community can be now. Sitting around complaining about the writing or if the game is "woke" or made you question your sexuality or sad that your daddy didn't hug you enough or whatever. Don't get me wrong, some of these topics are valid. But, that's not a conversation for now. Then there is the other crowd that sits there with magnifying glasses the size of dinner plates to analyze every pixel in every frame to find the "best" settings. And, if they don't like what they see, that just yell that the game is garbage and are suddenly armchair experts on game development and graphics. I strongly believe there are people that spend more time finding negative aspects of games than actually playing the game for enjoyment. Just to get internet points and cause drama. Gotta avoid the forums/social media some days.

 

[DryvBy]

If the new stuff isn't good and the old stuff was better, what's stopping you from enjoying the old stuff? I'm sure you haven't beat all the old games.

I do tiai with movies. I hate most modern movies so I just watch old stuff I've never seen.

 

[xenosys]

I'm convinced most of the "gaming is dead" rhetoric is just people aging out of the hobby. It's okay to step away from it for a while or just play retro games you like.

Spot on.

They've become the boomers they used to mock for talking about the "good old days" all the time.

 

[Danjin44]

Spot on.

They've become the boomers they used to mock for talking about the "good old days" all the time.

Like I said before most people in GAF too drowned on their own nostalgic, they keep chasing after feeling they got when first time they played games as kid and they desperately try to recapture that same feeling.

 

[GreatnessRD]

Short answer: No

Long answer: Hell No

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

The fun died when Dreamcast died.

At some level, I actually agree with this. That was the last console where fun, focused gameplay was at the core of the games. The Dreamcast's contemporaries starting getting into games with more scope and more emphasis on cinematic presentation, which wasn't inherently a bad thing, but those were the same trends that turned the generations that followed into a slog at times.

 

[Esppiral]

No, but they run on latest unreal and 4k 120fps!!! Or so they say.....

 

[Codes 208]

I just got done playing a 3 hour session of REPO with friends, laughing our asses off while having a ton of fun.
And this is after no-lifing MHW for the past couple of days. Lag aside, its been a ton of fun.

Soooo, Its not the games, its you.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

The fun died when Dreamcast died.

@OP Yes. It's just gotten harder so sift through all the shit that gets released along with them. I also don't think it's as easy as AAA vs AA or something, you can find great stuff and complete utter dogshit in all kinds of categories of games.

 

[Ghost23]

It's called becoming an adult. You get older and games continue to be catered towards kids and teenagers. It would be more weird if you found it equally enjoyable as when you were a kid.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

It's called becoming an adult. You get older and games continue to be catered towards kids and teenagers. It would be more weird if you found it equally enjoyable as when you were a kid.

This is completely inaccurate - if anything, games are more catered to adults now than they ever were in the past.

 

[Hohenheim]

For me, games are as fun as ever. Just have to find the right ones, which sometimes can be a bit of work. There's a ocean of amazing, fun games out there. And new ones keep coming all the time.
I'm currently enjoying Black Myth, which is some of the most fun i've had with a game in ages.

 

[GigaBowser]

Spot on.

They've become the boomers they used to mock for talking about the "good old days" all the time.

ahah no they used to makes 40 goord AAA games a year ps3 360

now they makes 3 and are woke

its all true im sorry my friends

 

[SHA]

Borderlands is supposed to be fun, the guys who made Duke Nukem 3D. Doom Eternal is pure masculinity and I find it fun. final fantasy pixel remaster is fun just like the new Tetris. Kart games are fun. Balatro is fun. Free to play are fun and there are many of them.

 

[RafterXL]

Games are still fun, you just have to weed out a lot more bullshit to get to the good stuff. When I was young, developers were just groups geeky dudes that were passionate about games and wanted to make the most fun games possible. Everything else was secondary. Now in the AAA space, there is a laundry list of things that are more important than making great games, and most developers are passionate about everything but making games. Every time I get sick of this industry, and the people in it, an Elden Ring comes out, or a Kingdom Come 2 comes out, and reminds me that games can still be as great as they always were, or better.

 

[rofif]

Yea of course. Stellar blade, ff16, hogwarts. Just few examples.
Not every game is about extreme challenge. Some just focus on being a fun game.

 

[CompleteGlobalSaturation]

Go play Space Marine 2 and Helldivers 2. They're two of the most fun games released in 2024.

If you want an older fun game, play Doom Eternal. It's fucking glorious.

 

[Team Andromeda]

It's hard to think of anything more fun and better in ones 40s to ones 20s or 30s


There's like of fun games out today . Yakuza In Hawaii is sheer Japanese madness and fun and the same goes for Astrobot

 

[BeardSpike]

I was in the same boat, but then switched from PlayStation to mostly PC, and on Steam you can find like infinite smaller games that are not bloated and trying new things and are cheaper and all that. Highly recommended. Is difficult to expect this from AAA given the risk to try new things is much more expensive.

Same, same.

I basically wonder if I should keep or just sell my PS5 and put in a better CPU and GPU. I'm waiting to see what RX 9070XT will bring to table since I'm basically gaming on Linux now, and AMD drivers are better there.

I also was always on PS controllers layout most of my life but recently I've purchased some 8BitDo controllers and I'm not having any issues at all with the layout. I've broken past that mental fanboy wall.

And I enjoy the freedom to switch to mouse and keyboard when I think that game I'm playing won't be fun to play on a controller but if I think game will be fun to play on a controller I'm grabbing my 8BitDo controller more often on PC rather than DualSense.

And If I want PS layout of joysticks I grab my 8BitDo Pro 2 controller, I'm amazed how light it is. Sometimes I'm dead tired after my job and just want a lighter controller in my hands. And this thing is as light as a feather compared to DualSense and even other 8BitDo controllers like Ultimate 2C and Ultimate 3-Mode, I'm personally tempted to buy Ultimate 2 with 1000Hz TMR Joysticks.

 

[Sunkrest]

I think old games are better and its not just nostalgia. I hate visual clutter new games represent. I can't stand modern UI in games, it's usually ugly and overcomplicated. It's like developers at one point decided that game development is 'figured out' so they just copy the same bad and boring elements over and over again. I just prefer oldschool way of designing games. Now it's all about 'content' and carefully crafted progression while back in the 90s and 00s it was all about the fun.

I'm talking about both single-player and multiplayer. Remember when we could join 16-64 player multiplayer servers and just... Have fun playing? Without stupid matchmaking and account leveling?

 

[Black_Stride]

If i ever gonna feel like op i'm just gonna stop playing all together.
Yes, videogames are still a lot of fun for me.

Exactly.
And sometimes reading peoples posts and/or seeing some youtube grifters it seems alot of people actually dont enjoy videogames anymore.

Just stop playing and find a new hobby.

Life is too short for you to be suffering.
Same with hard fanboys who must hate on game X because its made by company Y......other than Havens' game I try to NOT hate on games, cuz that negativity can spread and we end up with more jaded gamers who dont actually like the hobby anymore.

 

[Nankatsu]

You're not alone on this OP.

Specially this generation I think I just keep gaming because it has always been my way blow off steam and forget about real life problems. Maybe it's an effect of also getting older, I don't know.

In terms of pure fun while gaming, my peak was during PS1 and PS2 era. Different times, different ages, nothing to worry about.

What I do know is that slowly making the shift to PC has lighten up things for me a bit. I've always been mainly a console guy, but since doing a new rig my PS5 has been collecting dust.

On PC I find myself trying out games that most likely I wouldn't try out on console. Plus, assembling the rig and tinkering with it opens a whole new spectrum of things to learn and discover.

 

[gaming_again]

I was questioning myself when working on this platinum for Stellar Blade. Doing the fishing, pictures, can collecting. I was starting to feel like wtf am I doing with my life. Especially when I’m just 60% through the campaign.

Examine your use of the word 'working'.

 

[nowhat]

They are. It's just... you're not.

 

[Dutchy]

Games nowadays are tailored to reach the most wide audience and are more accessible than ever. Especially the latter has been a huge detriment to the fun in games for those who have been there since the early days.

Overblown UI's filled with quest markers, guidelines, hints, and overall just piss easy game design that was developped to be comprehensible and easy to unravel for even the biggest unga bunga's

There is little sense of discovery or leeway for players to reach a certain goal through sheer creativity and out of the box thinking since that would mean a big portion of those players/dollars would miss out.

I think a great example is CoD zombies. BO1/2 were timeless since the games were filled to the brim with these obscure easter eggs that required some brain power to solve. The game only told you that you were on the right track through vague audio cue's or voice lines. It was fun, mysterious, felt limitless and engaging and even 10-15 years later people still stumbled on new shit.

Fast forward to BO4 and later iterations, it's practically impossible to die and easter eggs are now missions with quest markers and checklists. And because of that no people really play anything anymore past the first year or so since it was never designed to retain players in the first place.

Similar evolutions took place in nearly every other franchise I used to love so for that reason I only dabble in indie games for the most part since those developpers see risk-taking as part of the creative process, coupled with the fact that they don't make me feel like I'm retarded lol

 

[KungFucius]

A game that is fun will almost always place moment to moment gameplay at the core of the experience. Far fewer games do that these days and it tends to be either Japanese titles or indie games. And it’s why people love Souls.

Western developers churn out bloated drivel. Narrative belongs in video games in the same way it does pornography.

Narratives are a big problem for me. I used to support them as the first games to put stories in them put interesting ones, or at least they were interesting in the context at the time. Now they are just too much. Maybe they are just too repetitive of previous games. I just finished Avowed and was wishing I could skip all convos and story. I was just mashing the button to get through it. Nintendo was right. Light narrative that only bothers you at key events is the only narrative that works. Or maybe the old FMV stuff would still work. Play for a while, watch a movie you don't have to click through or choose meaningless responses to. I don't know. I spend a lot of time gaming, but a lot of it is me finishing games I am bored with and being fed a story I don't give a fuck about.

 

[Ogbert]

Narratives are a big problem for me. I used to support them as the first games to put stories in them put interesting ones, or at least they were interesting in the context at the time. Now they are just too much. Maybe they are just too repetitive of previous games. I just finished Avowed and was wishing I could skip all convos and story. I was just mashing the button to get through it. Nintendo was right. Light narrative that only bothers you at key events is the only narrative that works. Or maybe the old FMV stuff would still work. Play for a while, watch a movie you don't have to click through or choose meaningless responses to. I don't know. I spend a lot of time gaming, but a lot of it is me finishing games I am bored with and being fed a story I don't give a fuck about.

Video games are appalling for narrative.

In contrast, they excel at is creating a sense of atmosphere and place. The environmental story telling of a Souls game is far more powerful than an attempt at telling a linear narrative. It hints at tragedy and allows the player to impact and affect a world that feels tactile, rather than sitting still with a controller in their hand and listening to an inane story.

There are very rare exceptions, like Bioshock. But that game is, again, a masterclass in creating a sense of place and drip feeding fragments of story only it has the added benefit of an Agatha Christie twist.

 

[Plague Doctor]

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: Stop playing modern AAA slop and there is a lot of fun to be had.

 

[Bond007]

Grew up like you and mostly agree with you.
I have great memories across each generation--- they are just becoming less and less, def less "fun" - im hooked on things less, im more selective with my time, so maybe im exposed to less aswell?

GTA6 could define this generation for me however. Really looking forward to it.

 

[Filben]

Obviously we're not looking at it through children's eyes anymore and we've seen plenty of games so it's getting harder to impress grown up people.

Still, plenty of fun games around.