f13.net

I've hit a serious wall here with the video games.  MMOs largely suck, to my estimation, both in quality and as a time sink.  Single player games have become so bland that I've lost any interest in buying anything new.  I have a list of over a hundred games on Steam and I've touched probably 5-10% of them for any meaningful play. 

What's happening here?  Is the game quality just that bad?  I played Demon's Souls like a fucking madman, and I've put more than my fair share of hours into Fallout 3 and NV.  I've been trying to digest Skyrim, but about a week ago (because we're getting ready to move) I put away my gaming computer and I really don't miss it a bit. 

My big interest currently seems to be board/card games.  I've been introducing the wife to them and she seems to enjoy playing, and that's nice because it's something we can do together. 

Yes and no.  There are a ton of shit games out there that really don't justify how much processor and HDD they take up beyond looking pretty.  And some games are so incredibly complex and deep I flat out do not have the time to invest in trying to figure them out.  I was a huge fan of a certain genre of gaming that has mostly died and been replaced with another style that doesn't appeal to me that often.  They still make games I like, I still love the Dragon Quest series and play them for 80+ hours each at a time (even the older ones) but for the majority of games out there, they just aren't for me or holding my interest.  My parents say I've grown too old for video games, but plenty of people my age still like to play those twitch FPS games and others so it isn't purely an age thing.  I believe it's as I said, the games I truly like are games that aren't terribly popular and thus aren't made like they were 15-20 years ago.

It's not just "congrats you're an adult now". Games got so expensive that they started suffering from the same problem that plagues Hollywood blockbusters now: Low risk reheats of old formulae. Over and over again. Except it's not big a deal to turn your brain off for two and a half hours. Considerably harder to do the same for the 25 hours needed to finish a single player game, or the weeks /played required to get through the endgame of an MMO.

You've played that shit before.

Don't give up on flash games, they're still fun and free, and I absolutely support board and card games. They're only a little more expensive than computer games and they have more replay value, fewer compatibility issues, and a better second-hand marketplace.

Part of it for me, also, is that I'm considering winding down my computer time in general.  I spend so much time on the computer at work.  I've even considered (and am still dismissing) the option of getting rid of internet at home. 

I think I agree with you about the game types, Selby.  But it's partially me as well.  I don't have the time to sink into playing through a really complex game and learning new stuff, but fuck it, I just don't have the desire even when I have the time. 

I keep trying and writing this and it just gets too fucking wordy.    Life priorities are going to be a part of it - kids, your own goals, etc.  And then a part of it also is that a lot of what is being made are sequels and rehashed games due to production cost.  Shit has gotten too safe, which makes for a more generic and bland experience.

Yeah, this post rings pretty true to me.  I don't even have a console now, just a PC, and the only game I really give two shits about that I can't play is Dark Souls.  I find myself increasingly playing video games not for fun, but because I'm in school and I have jack all else to do in my life at this point.  I'm not about to give them up, but they just aren't the big, consuming drive they used to be.  More like "what I do instead of watch TV."

Part of it's the whole "hey, look, it's ANOTHER millitary FPS with iron sighting and regenerating health and two weapons and etc. etc." thing, part of it's the whole "evil corporations are CONSTANTLY AND UNCEASINGLY fucking us over with retarded DRM, DLC, mining for personal information, marketing BS, etc. etc." thing, and part of it is that there doesn't seem to be much that's... I dunno, artistic out there these days?  It's hard for me to express it well...  It just used to be impressive, seeing what developers could do on the SNES or Genesis, being blown away by what was accomplished in DOOM or Wing Commander or what have you.  Now, it's all just craft.  I'm not impressed by SquareSoft doing another Final Fantasy game, because it's not innovative or technically impressive to tell a story in a game anymore, you can just render an FMV and play it off the DVD.  I'm sure the people doing the movies know their shit, it's not that it's badly done, it just doesn't matter that it's being done.  It was amazing hearing Celes sing in FFVI, corny though it was, and though the newer games are better, they're not as impressive, if I'm making any sense?  I dunno.

The last game that impressed me in technical terms was Shadow of the Collosus, and that was six years ago.

Personally, the way the genre of games I used to play (FPSes) have just been ruined because of the wide adoption of things like a cover system (which just ends up interfering and be jarring as hell), limits to how many guns I can drag alon, autoregenerating health, etc etc etc. Another genre I used to play lots, car games, just seem unable to surpass games such as live for speed and richard burns rally. Games like all the need for speed games aren't even trying to have a vaguely realistic physics engine, and games like dirt3 had the worst interface for actually getting to the driving part, and once I got to the actual driving part, what I noticed was the fact that they couldn't even be arsed to simulate the forces that the front wheels were under, they just pressed the "rumble effect" button.

Add to all that this incessant urge to constantly be edgier with more and more graphics, which means more costs, which means less innovation and more chasing the dragon, and seemingly more and more focus on PVP multiplayer, to the detriment of things like story or coop multiplayer, and yeah, I've suddenly found that the indie market and the strategy market seems to be my current gaming refuge. They're still small and niche enough that they seem to be made by players, for players.

I decided to only play stellar games and skip everything above average or merely excellent.

I played less than 5 games to completion last year and bought like a total of 7.

/shrug

What's on that list?

If by "better" you mean "looks and sounds prettier" then I agree 100% with that.  As others have said, it's like game designers got overly caught up in making them visually appealing and stunning, while forgetting that an actual game that has to be fun is required as the backbone and foundation once the shiny wears off.

I've had a pretty phenomenal year of gaming, looking over the 'so what are you playing' thread.

Mafia 2 - fun mafia story with great music and atmosphere
Blood Bowl - I kinda suck and don't really play anymore but had a ton of fun at times with it, wish I had the dedication to get better because I love the game
Fallout: NV - oh hell yeah
Divinity 2 - great eurojank rpg
Darkstar One - fun little shooter
Just Cause 2 - just pure awesome
Terraria - whee! Though glad I played it before trying minecraft
Amnesia - one of the greatest gaming atmospheres ever
More FFH2 because  :drill:
Rift - meh, but great combat and soul system (my alpha time was mostly 2010 so doesn't technically count)
Civ V - grew on me a bit
Alpha Protocol - interesting but I didn't get far, might be the low point of the year, but $5 /meh
Minecraft - zomg
Back to the Future Ep 1 - I'm a fan of the movies and enjoyed it
Skyrim - zomg
TOR - love it

I'm so not over gaming. And still plenty of stuff I'm looking forward to. It's a great time to be a gamer, tides lifting ships and whatnot.

I just don't have a lot of free time to game, and that time comes at the expense of sleep.  Still, I have a lot of fun. I just don't buy as much stuff and I don't play mediocre games unless I'm already invested in the series.

Wife that doesn't game.  Young child.  Srs bzns job.  No time.

This is spot-on for me, too.  My kid likes games, but between work and school I just don't have the time for them. 

The irony is that now we have enough money to pretty much buy whatever game I want, but I just don't have time to play them. 

I think the video game industry has become anti-consumer in some obvious ways and in some less obvious but just as annoying ways as well. Pair that with endless sequels and conceptual rehashes and things are definitely in a lull. There's a lot of disincentive at the point of purchase (money grab schemes, complex bonuses and pre-order options you need an excel spreadsheet to understand), the point where you turn on your console (system updates, laggy menus, installs, patch downloads) the point where you begin the game (entering DLC/online pass codes, horrible unskippable tutorials or games that introduce content at a snail's pace, 6 different splash screen devoted to middleware), etc.

I think one of the reasons iPhone and Flash games are doing well now is they remove many of those subtle turn-offs. Those things do add up, especially when what is being offered is relatively stagnant.

Most games just don't appeal to me anymore. If I'm playing something, it's the big things or specific stuff.

Next on the list is ME3, then GTA5 and sketched as option is JC3 when it'll release. Other than that, what I'm currently playing is pCARS. So you see, the list ain't big.

Yes.  I'm with Ghost.

It's horrible.

Hm. I forgot the DLCs, whether they're pre-order or not. I hate that, unless it's a whole bunch of extra missions or a whole new storyarch, which actually add value to the base game. Guns, like in RAGE? Die in a fire.

I find that I am just not prioritizing my gaming very high.  There are still tons of things I am playing or want to play, such as:

Skyrim
Arkham City
Dark Souls
ME3
TOR

And a host of others that would make the B list...but I find myself simply not dedicating the time too it lately.  I actually read a lot more than I game these days.


And this as well. 

I've got a stack of PS3 games 15 high that aren't even out of the shrink wrap.   :uhrr:

Apparently I have this stupid idea that buying the games will make me actually want to play them.  

I would also like to know which games you've played from start to finish this year, schild.

No, don't ask him that. :oh_i_see:

I play less stuff for the usual reasons, such as time considerations, but I've also realized that I'm jaded as fuck.  Super Metroid impressed me almost twenty years ago, then I played Shadow Complex and I enjoyed it in that context; ultimately I felt that it was mostly a graphics update while the game itself fell short of the standard set in 1994(?).  Most other games, however, compare unfavorably to my past experiences.  I'm jaded but I also think the tech bar has risen past the abilities of the average game studio, so they end up not being creative in any way.  Modern devs will have to work hard to impress me.  Skyrim visuals, even, lose significant impact because I remember playing Morrowind and simply looking at the sky for minutes on end.  I think the auroras are excellent but the awe didn't last as long.

Somewhat related, my son has gotten very interested in Sonic.  He has played a little of the originals and he obviously has an appreciation for the gameplay even though he is eight.  Currently his favorite is Sonic Generations, where you play both the old and new styles.  He even wants me to find some other music that fits the theme style!  I suppose I'll start with j-pop and then see if I can get some chiptune mp3s for him. :grin:  I figure he's going to be a very crotchety gamer by the time he is sixteen.

Dark Souls - Unfinished
Minecraft - Unfinished
Catherine - Unfinished
Deus Ex 3 - Finished
Portal 2 - Finished
Terraria - "Finished"
Skyrim - "Finished"

I tend not to count anything in the <$10 bracket as a game I purchased and played as I'll pay that for 2 hours of entertainment in the form of a movie, but Terraria is a unique specimen in that I spent 30-something hours with.

I've not logged into an MMO for months now (since my surgery in October) and tbh, I don't miss the game play at all.  I miss chatting with the online friends I've made, but the gaming itself, not so much.  I've even given up on playing social games like Farmville because I'm just not interested in neighborwhoring that much.  Part of the reason is I do spend so much time on the computer during the day that spending the entire evening there as well doesn't appeal to me any more.

Games are more and more about only making money.  There are of course people who still love the concept of making one, but even they are being co-opted.  And they become so big that the little guys are just drowned out in the noise.  We just need to remember they are still there, they do still love just making a game, and with Steam and other services they're still in a better place than a decade ago.

I disagree its never been a better time to be the small guy.

Yes, indie games are where the interesting things happen now.

I was thinking about this some more and I realized that, for me, Japan has gone dark.  There is Dark Souls, Disgaea and Catherine, but not much else has crossed my sights in quite a while.

A decade ago, that list was the same but different for Japan. Disgaea, Nocturne, and I don't know, ICO.

Japan has always been the same level of consistently shit mixed with "Better than everything else."

I enjoyed the hell out of Terraria, World of Tanks, Rift, and SWTOR (to a lesser degree).

I'm finding that the reason I game has changed as I've gotten older.  My mind races until late in the evening and I use gaming to calm my brain down.  I think this is why I enjoy MMO's so much.  The mechanics are pretty calming and I get to chat with some interesting people while calming my brain with mindless kill-10-rat quests.  

I think this is why I'll keep playing MMOs, sadly.   I need something to calm me down when I'm not in the mood to read.  Other games can fill the function, but it needs to be a fairly slow paced or story driven RPG.   As far as MMOs go, I'm pretty much over the genre and don't see myself getting riled up for another one.  They're games, better to treat them as such, instead of this holy grail of gaming that no one has gotten right.

Right now I've dropped down to playing 1 (if I win) or 2 (if I don't) games of LoL a night.  If I try to fit in a third, I won't get enough time to wind down, and trying to get to bed will be futile.

I still finished a few single player games last year.  DE3, inFamous, Portal 2, Dragon Age 2. Ohh, I'm pretty sure I didn't beat Alpha Protocol until after New Year, so that counts too.  I only bought a few games at retail prices that I really never dove into: Disgaea 4 and Dark Souls.  Played (and still playing)  a ton of LoL, played a decent amount of Rift and am enjoying SWTOR.   

I just wish I had enough time to do a proper Radicalthon of Dwarf Fortress.  I just can't seem to fit it in.  :oh_i_see:

I'm not in this boat because I'm catching up on games that I've missed over the last two years for lack of funds. However, I'm also unwilling to plunk down $60 for a new goddamn game unless it's something like the latest version of FIFA. I've decided that the Madden series is just not getting my damn money anymore and I really miss a yearly NFL alternative game because this year's Madden was so fucking bad, I regret having paid anything for it.

And MMOG's? Fuck you in the face. The last MMOG I paid for was Lord of the Rings Online and I played that for a year. I refuse to pay $60 for a box THEN a sub fee on top of that for what is another goddamn reiteration of Everquest with some of the shitty UI bits smoothed out into a more linear experience. My exception to this will be Guild Wars 2 unless the beta sucks monkey ass. Everything else MMOG wise that's coming up has left me cold - unless the game is F2P, I won't play it. MMOG devs have won the crown for being unoriginal, repetitive dickheads.

Its where all the interesting things have always happened.

Its just now mainstream enough for many of you here to notice.

This. DotA clones just have a tendency to not calm me down at all sometime...

Fuck right off with that shit.

This is it verbatim for me.  As I get older the skipping sleep thing doesn't work as well.  Sometimes I think it would be great if my wife gamed then I imagine the amount of shit that would not get done in that scenario and the fantasy turns into a nightmare.

It might be different if we had 2 TV's but for now I am limited in play time and to the very short list of games that won't give my kid nightmares and the wife doesn't mind watching.  The only games I have managed to talk my wife into playing are board games and rocksmith.

edit - Oddly enough my days of several thousand hours a year playing games ended right about the time I started posting on f13.

edit2 - We aren't counting phone games right?

Sure, what ever you say. lol.

What you mean to say is, we're back to the doom era of games development, where a small number of people make games that are actually games, whereas those that used to make games back in the doom era of games development, have moved on to make AAA games, and have all moved on to consoles, where people want graphical glitz more than content.

In other words, we've just done a 20 year circle in gaming.

Game playing goes through waves for me. Sometimes its about releases, sometimes its other things popping up in my life, sometimes its just about the weather. I highly doubt I will ever be "done" with video games - the level of interest just fluctuates.

This week I spent a total of maybe two hours playing games for the whole week. Next week, I'm taking Wednesday off so I can stay up all night on Tuesday getting my Femshep on.

You could say that yes.

You could also say that most people Ignore indi games, or pass them over just because they are indi. I have seen people here, on this site, completely Ignore games because they were not done by big name AAA houses. To the point of bashing them. MMO's especially, with some valid reasons, sure. But the only ones praised are from the big houses, or former big house developer employes.

This includes the staff, and writers, a quick glance at the front page going back shows this.

The resurgence of indi games in mainstream thought is because of a few rags to riches stories bring them back into the spotlight. So now its cool. Now they are noticed. Now an industry has sprung up around the notion.

Indeed.

I thought this place was more about the "riches to rags" pathway, e.g. Warhammer Online.

I'm not saying it's a bad time to be the small guy.  I'm saying our perceptions of gaming going to shit is because the big guys make all the noise, and gaming has become mainstream.

If you're in to the indie games and know where to look, it's a wonderful time.  You just have to be in the know (and have the energy to pursue it), or else you don't know about all the little gems out there.

Eh?

Xbox Indie Games?
Facebook?
PSN?
Humble Bundles?
Steam?
XNA?
Indi game chanels?
Kickstarter?
PCgamer?
Flash?
Crome Store?
Independent Games Festival?
Indie Game Jam?
rockpapershotgun?


Yeah, hard to find now! By golly!

I'm also talking in generalities about the mainstream and psychology behind why "there's nothing out there".  Gamers aren't some niche breed anymore.  It's more like the music scene where you've got super pop stars, a couple of big names everyone loves, and little indie genres that only a small number of people follow.

I know where to look.  Joe Blow does not.  Nor does he give a fuck.

I've been feeling lately like gaming for me has been more and more about passing time and less about enjoying the experience. Because of that and a serious talk with my girlfriend about whether my habits were addictive, I haven't touched a game in two weeks, save for a couple rounds of Smash Brothers one night for the sake of my friend's nostalgia.

It's a little weird participating in the culture (posting here and watching League of Legends streams) and not doing the actual gaming, but staying on the wagon hasn't been that difficult so far. I don't plan on avoiding games forever, and Diablo 3 could break me if I get in the beta. But hey, nothing's going to come out that won't be here in a few years. Except MMOs.

Not done, but I don't think I was ever the same sort of gamer as some of you guys are describing. I have very specific tastes in gaming, and I will play the ever loving fuck out of games that appeal to those tastes, long after I suspect most normal people would stop (exhibit A: The Sims and all its derpy children). Plus the kinds of games I really like (city builders, for example) don't change as much or have the baggage of those changes the way, say, FPS games have.

It helps, of course, that Ingmar is also a gamer, and we enjoy gaming together. Plus no kids. Just cats.

What I have found is that as I age I just get more picky. Which is only natural I suppose, I've been gaming for 30 years now, I'm very, very used to the way games are done.

Games rarely surprise me these days. I do appreciate a game that's done well, but I honestly can't remember the last time I saw something that was truly new to me in a game - except for Katawa Shoujo, which I haven't played myself, only spectated RK47's radicalathon.

You can call that either jaded or experienced, which depends on your frame of mind I suppose. The gaming industry is no different from any other entertainment industry in this respect - it's mostly about making profit and investors don't like excessive risks being taken with their money. We all love a good car crash story when that equation goes wrong (DNF) and that's the kind of shit that keeps big developers playing safe.

And this is why the indie gaming scene is the best chance of being surprised. We all know the next Radiohead album/Halo game/Terminator movie is going to be predictable and formulaic, which is why we pin our hopes on funny little upstarts who are still doing it for the love of whatever genre we're talking about.

In all truth, until Tribes Ascend, I hadn't been playing much.  There just wasn't much coming out that I liked, most shooters had been hopelessly consolified (I'm looking at you, Deus Ex) to the point I just couldn't stand them.  If I have to hook up a XBox controller to my PC, you're doing it wrong.

I was playing games as a sort of professional duty, because I needed to stay current, not because they were fun.  Even the few bright spots (Oblivion, Mass Effect series, GTA series) were lacking something.

T:A was the first game that I sat down and played for 8 hours straight just for fun in years (since I dropped out of Eve).  And I was starting to think I was just too old for games.  Now I think it's not me, it's the games.  They *suck*.  They are homogenized tasteless piles of pap with designs produced by taking "Franchise + New Graphics + Focus Group Plot = Shit in a box".

--Dave

I haven't played much for a long time, apart from BB and Skyrim, and not really at all in the last few months.

Just don't get as much out of it anymore, and the time commitments dont work with my current life.

Just in the off chance that anyone hasn't seen it, this got a chuckle out of me:

If Quake Was Done Today (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W1ZtBCpo0eU)

LOL!  I haven't seen that before.  "Rocket jumped to school, both ways, in BOILING LAVA!"   :heart:

This is me, too.

The gaming time I have comes at the cost of something - sleep, sports or other things I like to do in my spare time like watching movies. Most of my gaming time is an hour or two at a time at most and i'm usually doing a couple things at once.

Most people only play Big Important Games. (TM) I think the internet and the fact that you can know exactly what everyone else is playing has done a lot to destroy personal taste. Like back in the old days if you picked up a game for SNES called Shadow of the Ninja you might have thought it was awesome and be completely unaware that nobody else had heard of it and was playing Super Mario Kart instead. These days you go to some gaming website or forums and see a 100 page thread about Mass Effect and a million cover stories and a 2 page thread about Infinite Space with zero press coverage and think to yourself "where there's smoke there's fire, clearly ME is the space RPG to be playing." There's a snowball effect where "event games" rise to the top and everything else seems irrelevant.

Of course the Big Important Games are typically the blandest shit imaginable. When I see people list what games they are playing and it's all event games I feel sad. IMO gaming is a lot more fun when you don't give into that hype BS and play games and genres you enjoy, rather than going from GTA to Mass Effect to COD to Uncharted.

Hard to find? No. Hard to find something good in tremendous mountains of shit? Yes.

You're sort of assuming no one actually likes those "event games," which is silly. I enjoyed the Mass Effects, for example. I didn't play them because ME is clearly the space RPG to be playing (I don't generally give a fuck about "space RPGs" to start with). I played them because people I knew played them, and enjoyed them, and thought I would enjoy them too. And hey, I did. Woo?

Honestly, your post is just a weeeee bit "this hobby was AWESOME until it got POPULAR."

There is something to be said for the way the games I used to like have changed pretty dramatically the last 5 years, and some of that is due to how it's become popular.

I love games still, but I find I rely much heavier on the modding community than I ever have before. Games like Total War, Mount and Blade, and Elder Scrolls have found new and wonderful rebirth time and again for me through mods.

Personalities drawn to something when it's niche and different getting upset when it changes because of popular influence?  That's never happened before! 

It's not surprising to see the ennui.  Games are different now and it's not just chasing the graphics dragon on dev's part.  It's all been touched on in this thread already.  The audience shift, the market research, needing to get a bigger audience to make-back the increased budget.  It's Hollywood II, Electric Boogaloo and it's going to have all the same problems.

Yes, games have changed because they're popular now.  They're only going to get simpler and more watered-down, you're just seeing the start of it.  You can continue to play your old catalogs and cherry pick the few games that still focus on play vs. revenue streams and market research or find a new hobby until everything collapses again. (Don't hold your breath.)

In a large part, the problem is that most of the stories have already been told.  I can think of very few of the great themes that haven't already been used up, e.g. Star Wars, LOTR, Star Trek, D and D, Dune, etc., and even the great ground up themes like Diablo and Warcraft and Starcraft are getting on up there.  There's nothing new theme wise that doesn't just suck.  Sure, there's a few gems, like Arkham Asylum/City and Demon's Souls, but for the most part there are no original ideas any more for theme. 

Additionally, until there is a great step up in the technical side of things, there's nothing really to innovate any more.  It's all been done, for the most part.  That's why you have a decent story, like Dragon Age, pasted onto a very typical UI/game system. 

DLC is an interesting deal.  Most DLC feels pasted on.  There have been very few DlC's that I've gotten for games that I truly love (like Fallout NV) that add something to the basic gameplay that is interesting.  The Sierra Madre DLC for that was one of the worst implemented that I've dealt with, even though the story was decent.  It just doesn't feel like part of the game at all.  I distinguish true content DLC from "new guns" DLC, which I won't buy. 

I'm going to let you think on that for a moment then you can come back to it.

For the original question,  yup pretty close to done, which is ironic for me right now.

Don't try and get all intellectual about this.  It's fucking video games. 

There's nothing original coming out at all. 

I can't help but shake my head when people say there's nothing original coming out while a game like Journey goes virtually unnoticed here.  Out of 17 posts in the thread about it, maybe 4 people actually seemed to have an interest in it despite the fact that it's one of the best reviewed games I've seen in a long time.  I think the problem here is more than people hate to step out of their comfort zones and then complain that there's nothing new for them to experience.  When you look at the fact that the MMO forum has an almost equal amount of posts as the forum to discuss all other PC and Console games, I'd suggest that maybe the issue isn't entirely with the games being released.

You misunderstand.

I'm not talking about gaming being popular. It was popular in the NES days too. I'm talking about the market being dominated by a thin slice of titles. Sales are very top heavy with very little apparent expression of personal taste.

I'm sure everyone skipping from one event game to the next enjoys them, but I also find that those people are the most likely to make threads like this where they just sort of lose interest. A lot of people don't seem to like any style of game or developer, they just like the biggest games of the year that are ostensibly the "best" in terms of hype and metacritic scores.

Most of these games are pretty good in terms of craft, it's not like these big event games are quite obviously pieces of shit. However a lot of them are basically big budgets married to competent craft and little in terms of design. Basically empty calories. So it's no wonder people get burned out.

It's like if you look at the Transformers movies, they have a certain element of craft and obviously have large budgets. But they have bad acting and terrible scripts, all that money doesn't make the design of the movie good, it just glosses over the problems. Certain elements of the craft are very well done but others are neglected. A lot of big games are the same way - they have a lot of money and put in on the screen, which is audience pleasing. But the actual design (take Uncharted for example) is weak.

As opposed to good indie games (or really just good games), which typically have some sort of novel design hook or compelling gameplay mechanic as the primary element since design hooks are cheap and production is expensive.

It's a PS3 exclusive title that's not even out yet.  Dark Souls had the same problem here.  It's not that we don't like interesting games, it's just that PS3s are not as omnipresent as PCs on this board.

I'd wager a guess that PS3 is the least-owned 'major' system out of f13 posters, yeah.

I'll take notice when it's on a platform I actually game on.

Replace the Journey with something like Vessel for example.  Journey just happens to be the example most on my radar.

What's supposed to be the big deal with Vessel?  It looked like a fairly generic puzzle platformer to me.

Not trying to be a smartass or anything, I'm genuinely curious since I'm between games at the moment.  I didn't see anything on here about it, and the trailers looked boring.

Since you bring it up, I'll probably check it out.   :why_so_serious:

That's much of my own situation. The other thing that may be happening with Ghost (it happens with me) is he's cycling through hobbies. I go through phases of MMOing, consokle gaming, PC gaming, miniatures and painting, 1:6 modelling, and tabletop gaming.

Having my wife now into gaming - or willing to game with me and enjoy it has definitely changed my own habits, though. I get bored very easily with many games/genres if she's not in the mood to play alongside me.

TGR - I think out of all you mentioned earlier, co-op gaming is healthier than it's ever been before...

So will you be publishing a list of which games I'm allowed to have fun playing, and which I'm not? I hadn't been aware that I'm not allowed to enjoy GTA, ME or UC, and had been enjoying them.
 :uhrr:

It has? I'd gotten the impression coop was generally some sort of hot potato very few developers wanted to touch, which used to sadden me until I stopped caring for other reasons.

Can anyone explain why anybody would marry someone that doesn't at least have a passing interest in your hobbies?

There are these things called vaginas.  They tend to turn men into slobbering idiots.  I'm assuming it's the same deal for women.

Aha. That explains why I've never heard oif it. I ignore games until they're actually released these days. Raging over a lack of discussion about an unreleased PS3 game is a bit  :oh_i_see:...

Only 8% of them.

Some of us have more than one hobby or interest. You can be into jetskiing with the wife even if she's not into gaming for example.

If my wife had no interest, that'd be one thing. The bigger worry is people who marry women (or men) who then try to re-mold/"improve" them by stripping away the other person's interests.

This very well may be the case.  I've just never had it happen with video games before.  That's always been a constant.  I do have a bit of an addictive personality though, and when I'm onto a hobby I'm really, really into it.

No need to share gaming devices.

Ingmar refuses to enjoy skiing. Straight up. I don't know how our marriage survives.  :heartbreak:

But yeah, it's one thing to marry someone who doesn't have much interest in one of your hobbies, it's another to deal with someone who actively resents your un-shared hobby as "ignoring" them. I dated a dude like that, we lasted three years, I have no idea how.

Portal 2, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, Mass Effect 3, Syndicate, Twisted Metal, pretty much any MMO, Dead Island, Resident Evil 5, Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Journey, Diablo 3, Terraria, etc...

Who's being intellectual about it? It's a dumb statement.   Particularly when you back up your statement with 'evidence' of only big-name Hollywood franchises and those from ONE game developer then despair that there's no original ideas.

The problem is original ideas not receiving AAA funding or you not seeking them out in the indy market, not that all the possibilities are done forever.  Oh, woe is gaming.

Then to say without technical innovation there can be no advancement?  WTF.. yes, that's why there's been no new board games in 50 years, right? Once we figured out printing on boards and the pop-o-matic.. bam.. all development of boardgames stopped because they created all iterations all they could.   And Painting.. shit, nothing new there in thousands of years, right?

Creativity not being marketed does not mean there's no creativity.

It is pretty much a golden age of game design with so many tools allowing easy game creation.  But those designs are blunted by an over saturated market and insecure monetization.  Witness Zynga.

I can see that you completely missed a big point of what I was saying-  most of the big name hollywood franchises have been worked over.  Do we need another LOTR or Star Wars game?  Fuck no.  So back to your point, I'm absolutely positive that there are scads of independent developers coming up with games that have riveting stories to tell.  There surely are games with stories even more riveting than Dragon Age Origins and Halo and Mass Effect.  Surely nobody is rehashing old, contrived story lines, right?

I have yet to see an interesting mechanism come out for a video game in recent memory that is even close to new and innovative.  That, like you said, doesn't have to have anything to do with technology, however without technological advancement I don't see a lot of room for innovation-  a lot has already been done, and there's a limit to what you can do with a keyboard and mouse or joystick.  Wake me when you find something new and interesting but I think it's going to take 3D or some massive improvement with movement or voice recognition technology to develop something really cool.  

And lastly, regarding indie games, I don't have the time or the money to keep up with every indie game that comes out.  That is one of the things that I depend on this board for.  The last reasonable low budget game I played was Terraria, and that kept me occupied for a while.  I figure that when something is interesting people around here will start talking about it, indie or no.

I'm also in the boat of kid + job means not having enough time. I'd love it if games could be released in really short form, like 2 hour episodes. Get rid of the bloat and repetition and grinding, and just have really good stuff for a short amount of time. And I don't mean Angry Birds. There's no reason why someone couldn't do a really good FPS or RPG campaign that could be played in two hours. If they can do it with movies, they can do it with games.

Text adventures have been doing it for 17 years (http://ifcomp.org/).

There are financial, engineering and production things that make this hard to do. (Basically making a 2-hour game isn't 5 times cheaper than making a 10 hour game.)

No one cares.

Oh for sure, especially because you can't pad out my 2 hour game by making me run back and forth from one end of the world to the other, or making me kill room after room of the same mobs. I get it, I will be paying a lot more per hour than with, say, Skyrim. But I don't care. If I bought Skyrim, I wouldn't complete even a quarter of it.

I think that because our generation (I am loosely including the 25 to 45 crowd here) has kind of been on the ground floor of gaming development over the years, we are not only hard to please, but we are also hard to surprise.  All of us can probably remember the days of going to the store and finding OMG GAME X IS IN STOCK, getting it home and opening the shrink-wrap, and experiencing gaming nirvana.  Everything was so novel, so new, so original.  Even the shittiest (in hindsight) stuff could suck you in for hours.  It was all magical and amazing.  Okay, maybe it wasn't, but that is how I remember it. 

It is almost impossible to invoke that reaction from us anymore, because nowadays, almost none of it is new and original, and even when it is it is only so because it is so far out of the norm as to be niche.  Our generation of gamers has seen and done too much to ever recapture any of that magic.  Now, we live for graphical magic, we go for a bit of nostaligia sometimes, and we hope to experience smaller bits of amazingness.  The gorgeousness of Skyrim and the adventurous feeling it gives.  The brutal difficulty of Dark/Demon Souls.  The parts of the new Zeldas that feel like the old Zeldas.  Shepherd unexpectedly putting a cap into some alien's face.

We can't go back.  And even sadder, I am seeing in my own children that they will never experience the same magic we did as kids.  The will still play games, and still have fun, but it is virtually impossible to amaze them.  They've already seen it all and it is second nature to them.  Poor sods.  We should be glad that we ever got to experience it at all.

I went into 2011 feeling immensely cynical about the state of gaming in general.  2011 then proceeded to beat my ass down with Portal 2, Deus Ex, Arkham City, and Skyrim.  Yeah, you still have people like EA and Ubi churning out shit and lazy sequels all over the place, but there are a lot of really great things coming out too, and the great games are all making great money, which will only encourage the studios to keep up the good work.  There is still hope.

That being said, what I haven't seen in video games that I miss greatly is a good multiplayer.  That sort of multiplayer feeling you get from camping your ass at a table with five other people for hours of Arkham Horror.  Co-op games like Dead Island and Borderlands are all a little iffy in how they handle things, and pvp games have all turned into generic modern shooter war 5 or team fortress 2 clones.  Video games right now are great for playing with yourself, but I'm still not seeing much that makes me really excited to be able to play it with friends.

One of us needs to venture out into the world to buy food and stuff, it sure as hell isn't going to be me.  If left unchecked I am a total addict, if I married someone who was going to feed that fire then I'd be living in a cardboard box about now.  We have plenty of other things we enjoy doing together.

I would not say I am "done with video gaming", plus like schild, I never bought/played a huge catalog, just a half-dozen titles a year. One game alone might consume most of my gaming time in a given year. And I am picky. And some genres no longer appeal to me -- i.e, have not enjoyed a FPS since Wolfenstein 3D, have soured on MMOs (but still waiting for a good "wild west" themed MMO!), do not have the click fu for multiplayer RTS anymore (still enjoy SP campaign & skirmish modes). And the TBS strategy selections have stagnated, or worse, been entirely raped (Civ V).

I had a hardcore MMOG habit from UO to EQ2.  Then life/family just required that I stop.  For the longest time I couldn't enjoy single player games because I missed the social chatter of MMOGs.  Fallout 3 cured that.  I enjoy games now that offer the ability to play short sessions and make progress.  I played Portal for the first time last year and am halfway through Portal 2, playing 30-60 minutes a week.  

I don't have the desire to buy new games the day they come out.  I don't have the time or the best PC any more.  I play a few and then go to Steam to see what's discounted that might be fun.  Finally tried Mount & Blade last year, for example.  I have become Mr. 40-something casual gamer.

Pretty much this, I use to grind like mad in PT/WoW etc but now with RL that life is gone. I keep my ear out for great games but blowing $40/$50 for a new game on Release Date that I'll spend 2/3 hours on a week just doesn't make sense.

I'm slowing playing through DE3 which is a lovely hit back to nostalgia and have some Frozen Synapse/Blood bowl for my interaction component. Terraria was solid 100 hours for me to playing hardcore solo which I should have radicalthoned. It scratched that old almost forgotten MMO itch.

I ran pretty hardcore with Rift, and to balance that out, I'm gaming a lot less now.

I dunno. I certainly don't play as much as I did. Then again, I have kids, dogs and other shit now. There's still good games. I played the hell out of Skyrim and nostalgic bullshit aside I think it was the best so far of the Elder Scrolls. I play Forza 4 and although I play it infrequently it's a great game. Dark Souls is kicking my ass in small discrete play chunks.

MMO's? Not so much. Rift was awesome for 3 months. I still do EVE but it's not really a game heh. The rest are shit IMO. Not worth playing really. (SWTOR was the first AAA MMO I didn't even try - not suggesting it's a bad game but from what i heard it wasn't for me.)

Times change.

I'm sort of done.  I sit around on Sundays with plenty of unopened games to play and no motivation to play any of them.

I have been sticking with SP games for a good while now. MMOs were having too much of a negative impact on my work and social life in the long run, and the shine wore off after a while. Fun while it lasted, but I'm not going back.

I think I might have found Skyrim more interesting 5-10 years ago.  The problem now is that the world is so huge and I don't really feel like much happens in the 30-45 minutes that I play it.  I haven't gotten very far into it. 

MMOs might be more interesting if any of them were anything more than reskinned WOW.  Yes, yes, I know that some of you will believe that there are some truly unique and interesting things going on in certain MMOs (some of the smaller productions), but there is always something lacking with them.  The persistent Minecraft multiplayer worlds were very, very interesting.  Is the group here still playing without the monsters?

Did you build giant teeth in Minecraft?

I suppose I could.   :awesome_for_real:

It is truly the land of dreams.

We've had monsters on as long as I've been on there. I think the server is a version behind right now, though, so I played a little single player over the weekend.

So....creepers cause cavities?

Of course they do.  Haven't you heard of the cavity creeps?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8Y_vEKbZhU

I was on in the very beginning.  Nobody wanted monsters because it would mess up their creations.  Maybe I'll give it another go. 

My interest in consoles died this gen, because the TV in my room died and I'm too lazy to buy another one or move my living room's big screen into my room (also because that TV is for when I have people over). Yeah, I know.

I have a goddamn mess of stuff on Steam I haven't even touched from the holiday sale...I picked up Dead Space 1/2 for like $5, Bulletstorm for like $3-5, that last humble bundle (of which I've played...Cave Story again), and like a dozen other games...Oh, I think I played some Dungeons of Dredmore too.

I log onto TOR and WoW when people want to play and get shitfaced drunk on Vent, which is about the highlight of my weekly gaming experience. It's just depressing.

Recent drama with my now ex-gf and it being a part of my current gaming life has really put me off on gaming.  Especially since now that she has a chunk of my online friends, except the ones I've known before swtor, thinking i'm some creeper.   :oh_i_see:

Ooh, that sucks.  I'm glad my wife isn't into gaming, really. 

In some ways it was my fault.  Don't date below your age bracket.  She was 14 years younger than me and I was pretty much thinking with the wrong head. 

 :ye_gods:

Ok she was 25, I'm not like totally robbing the cradle.

Isn't the rule "Don't 'date' 20-somethings.  Ever."  Go higher, go lower* but never in the 20's.



*This idea not valid north of the Mason-Dixon

 :oh_i_see:

Well 20-somethings today do alot more than the girls when I was a 20-something, that's for sure.  lol

Awkward...

One only need look at his avatar for clues.

I would prefer to not do so.  

I thought I was the only one who was vaguely uncomfortable.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/face.png)

It has to be something special to date someone more than a few years difference and make it work.  Chances are you're in very different phases of life, even if you get along wonderfully.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking that.

This is basically what it was, wanting different things from each other... but her not taking the ending well.

Not a lot of chicks do.  :why_so_serious: :why_so_serious: :why_so_serious:

I would have assumed that you meant "not taking it well in.......the end".   :awesome_for_real:

The 3 hottest girls I know, all in their mid 20's are all currently dating (or have just married) men in their 40's.  It's failry common I've come to realize (and gives me hope for my old age, heh).

Where do you live, and what kind of lifestyle did the two live, individually?

No comment.   :drill:

They are also probably reliable customers of AshleyMadison.com as well.  The women, I mean. 

Early 40s husband and late 20s wife is not that unusual in New York City.  That's not me, though.  The wife and I are 6 months apart. I dated two significantly younger women when in my early 30s and the "phases of life" comment was right on.

Now that's rather judgmental shiz.  None of them are like that at all.

To answer Bhodi:

1.)  Is half Japanese half Chinese (Japanese national) who has an econ degree and works at a bank.  Just married a German Engineer in Detroit.

2.)  Is French who is an intellectual property lawyer, dating American journalist.

3.)  Is an American who works at Google as a programmer, dating an airline pilot.

So, most are international I guess (and come to think of it, another very hot Chinese friend who was stewardess for Cathy Pacific (they only hire hot ones) was dating a 40 year old guy, but that didn't work out).  So maybe it’s a cultural thing.  Still, all of them were dating nothing but people in their age range, and all seem to have abandoned that for older men, and all (except for the Chinese I just mentioned) so far seem the happiest they've been in a relationship in a long time.

Anecdotal I know, but with all that going on in my circle of friends, I've stopped raising my eyebrows at 15 year age difference in relationships.

Based on those profiles I can understand it on the women's part.  They want a more mature, stable guy and probably don't yet want (if ever) families.  The 40 year old men you mention are stable and have their shit together in a way I've never known 20-something guys to.


Warning: Unscientific speculation based on nothing but CW and pop psychology ahead.  Skip if you don't feel like engaging in late-afternoon BSing about stupid shit that isn't to be taken too seriously. (why are you here again?)

While I made the joke previously about dating 20-somethings, but "conventional wisdom" about 20-something women and 40-something men says such romances would work well.  The old adages being that young-women are uncomfortable with themselves and sex and therefore don't want it often and guys in their 40s have mellowed and lost enough testosterone to not want to bang every night.   The young ladies are looking for stability while they figure "who they are" out.

Which then leads to a reverse in life with cougars & young men.  More mature women wanting sex because they're finally comfortable with themselves and want to explore life from that angle but the guys of their age having mellowed after the chaos of figuring themselves out.  So the women hook-up with young guys who are insatiable due to raging hormones.

Seems to me setting society up that way would benefit everyone.  So bring on the 20-something ladies!  :why_so_serious:

There's also the biological aspect of the fact that women in their late teens and early twenties are typically very fertile and men in the late thirties and early forties are often are at the height of their "power", meaning earnings, health, looks, etc., when they are all averaged together.

Phases? I sum it up as maturity levels. Sadly, I am in my late 30s, still look and act like I am lagged by about a decade in the maturity dept. So dating someone in their 20s is actually more beneficial for me since I am on the same level. Of course, I dread revealing my real age when pressed...

Backing up a bit, that is absolutely valid of anywhere in America. 20-something girls qualify as the dumbest people I've ever met. I've met teenagers with more logic and reason than a 20-something female.

Something happens there, I don't know what, but I think giving them the right to vote may have been a mistake.

None of the girls here can argue otherwise because they're not 20-something anymore, so this isn't even bait.

That was the opposite of our relationship pretty much, although I'm not 40.. yet.  She just wasn't mature enough for me overall.  I think that was the deal breaker.  Although she says she wants a stable deal she also wants to be free.  I don't understand that logic, well I do... but at my age I don't have time for that shit. 

Well, as my high school US History teacher use to say, "In 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote.  Later that year, Warren G. Harding, arguably the worst president in this nations history, was elected.  Coincidence?"

 :oh_i_see:

As my freshman Poly-Sci teacher used to note, "People have lamented as male privilege that after women got the right to vote, many of them simply voted the same as their husbands... but it would be just as statistically true to say that after women got the right to vote, men were afraid to vote differently than their wives."

I blame 20-something female irresponsibility on the desperate tail end of the Cinderella Delusion. Life may be hard right now, but it's less important to plan for the future that to look good and stay trendy just in case Prince Charming's around. A perfect marriage to somebody rich and handsome and then kids or a career or art or vacation or whatever else strikes her fancy is kind of like winning the lottery... except there's this general cultural idea that if you're thin enough, cute enough, and have beautiful hair it's practically inevitable.

By 30 it's usually over, and by 35 she's laughing about it with her friends, but in the mid 20's it's a dream defended with fundamentalist fervor.

You guys are a bunch of sexist jerks, or really unlucky.

I don't think the sentence I am about to write is sexist, just true.  Women aspire for the perfect much more actively and for longer than men do.  This is not a bad thing or a good thing.  It just is.  Men generally will accept the best of what is in front of them at the time, while women will keep looking past what is in front of them, hoping for better and better to come along.

There are obviously exceptions to this as not all men are like all other men and not all women are like all other women, but in general I think it explains the biggest differences in life outlook.  Once women hit their 30s, they start to realize that the perfect might not actually be coming or maybe what perfect is starts to change.

I like it when we sum up half the race with stereotypes.  :drillf:

Nothing like coming to a gamer site to hear a bunch of nerdy dudes delve into the psychology of women.

 :facepalm:

These aren't really mutually exclusive, you know.

Might even say they tend to reinforce one another.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85916/bob_lick_lips.gif)

I dunno, the whole "sharp knees" thing kind of belies this. As well as men dumping women for younger women, many more couples where the man is less attractive rather than the reverse, etc.

Generalizations this large are probably not good to make, and if anything this one seems backwards.

Sharp knees is just guys being hyper-picky when presented with endless pictures of attractive women on the internet, when if a fraction of those girls said "hello" in real life, they'd be quite happy for a week.

We'd talk about games, but apparently they all suck.

Personally, this is the golden age of gaming, we're spoiled for choice and if you can't find something that you enjoy playing, you aren't looking hard enough.

Really ?

Well, that blows.

You say that, but show me a recent rally simulator which doesn't suck, or a recent FPS game which isn't full of console-y control mechanisms.

Disagree.

1999:
    January 31 - Silent Hill (PS1)
    January 31 - Sim City 3000 [PC]
    February 11 - Final Fantasy VIII - (PS1)
    February 12 - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (Win)
    February 28 - Heroes of Might and Magic III (PC)
    February 28 - Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance (PC)
    March 16 - EverQuest (PC)
    March 31 - RollerCoaster Tycoon (PC) (2003 for XBox)
    April 7 - Team Fortress Classic (PC)
    April 10 - Warzone 2100 (PC)
    April 30 - Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast (PC)
    May 12 - Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (Arcade) (2000 for DC, 2004 for PS2/Xbox)
    May 31 - Ape Escape (PS1)
    June 11 - Descent³ (PC)
    June 12 - Counter-Strike (PC)
    June 24 - Persona 2 (PS1)
    July 14 - Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (N64)
    July 31 - Outcast (PC)
    August 11 - System Shock 2 (PC)
    August 12 - Syphon Filter (PS1)
    August 16 - Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (PS1)
    August 27 - Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (PC)
    August 31 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (PS1) (2000 for N64/DC)
    September 28 - Homeworld (PC)
    September 30 - Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (PC)
    October 11 - Jet Force Gemini (N64)
    November 10 - Half-Life: Opposing Force (PC)
    November 11 - Medal of Honor (PS1)
    November 19 - The Longest Journey (PC)
    November 30 - Unreal Tournament (PC)
    December 2 - Quake III Arena (PC)
    December 2 - The Legend of Dragoon (PS1)
    December 12 - Planescape: Torment (PC)
    December 29 - Shenmue (DC)

That single year represents the golden age of gaming. Yes, I copied that list from Wikipedia and removed a total of like six pieces of crap. The ratio is still outstanding and I went straight to look at 1999, I didn't even need to look at another year. Because that's the year. I almost looked at 2000 also, but I remember it being VERY close to, but not quite as good as 1999.

I guess that I always thought of 'golden age' differently than the rest of you.  I think of 'golden age' in terms of innovation and creation as well as prosperity.  Perhaps that comes from a background in comic book collecting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Comic_Books).  The Golden Age of comics was more one of innovation and development than of artistic creativity.  

I consider the golden age of gaming to be in the late 70's through the 80's. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games)    The period Schild highlights I'd consider the silver age, much like the late 60's in comics.  It's no shock that we disagree... we like (and grew up with) very different games.

I've only really played 4 maybe 5 of the games in that 1999 list.   (FF VIII (not to completion), Counter Strike, Ogrebattle, Homeworld (not to completion), and I think I played Sim City 3000) :oops:

But back on the OP a bit, I'm really trying and failing to make an effort to play less games.  I'm a very, very bad sufferer of the typical student problem "I have a major paper due in 4 hours, well that means I can game for at least 3 more hours before I start on it."  It feels like ADD combined with a gaming addiction sometimes when I'm stuck up until 1 AM pissed at myself for not just getting the work done first.  I can find stuff I want to play almost always, but I have so much real life crap right now that I should be putting more effort into.  On top of that I'm working a part time job and work study at a place and area that I'm actually enjoying.  So I need to be devoting some time to learning more about what they have me doing to work at turning it into a full time position. I'm actually going to try to just play no games at all this week (baby steps).  If I can make it to Wednesday I will be impressed with myself.

My silver age of gaming was 1996. Civ 2, Diablo, Warcraft 2, Daggerfall, Heroes of M&M 2, Lords of the Realm 2, Mario Kart 64, Quake, Resident Evil, Super Dodge Ball, Super Mario 64, and Tomb Raider.

1993-2000 was the period of gaming that shaped modern gaming. It was both highly profitable, highly creative, and the birth of what we now know. It's the Golden Age of gaming. While old farts who like lawns and other dumb shit would argue the Atari 2600 perhaps through the end of the NES era was the golden age, you'd have to look back and realize that there was VERY little innovation happening post say, Space Invaders, SMB, and Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy. While we got some weird experimentation (Toejam and Earl and Klax come to mind), innovation was not the order of the day. The industry was not yet self-aware of what it was doing.

~1980-1992 represents gaming appearing and trying to figure out what it was. 1993-2002 represents the vast majority of what we know now, with it peaking in the above year. The Silver Age of Gaming would be trying to recapture the Golden Age, but ain't nobody going to come close to Age of Empires II (1999), Final Fantasy VI (1994), Deus Ex (2000 - though, they'll never stop trying), Planescape (1999 - they need to stop trying), etc.

In addition, it wasn't until the 90s/early 2000s that games reached the threshold that comics reached becoming an acceptable form of art (still up for dispute by idiots) and a massive part of mainstream culture, which comics achieved during its golden age.

EDIT: TO ADD - I would argue that the golden Age of ARCADE gaming - was late 70s through late 1985/early 1986. This is part of the reason the golden age of video gaming (that which was sent by video at home to your TV) could not have been its golden age - because we were all still playing that shit including SMB at the arcade, where it was better and even more communal.

Edit 2: Also fixed a MASSIVE typo in my first paragraph, that being the year 1993.  :uhrr:

I assumed that the term 'video game' include arcade, pc, and console. 

When I look back on my Golden age, I tend to focus on games like Elite, M.U.L.E, Zork, Star Raiders, Archon, Race for the Stars, Pac Man, Asteroids, Defender, Joust, and others.  They were a huge jump from the Avalon Hill and Milton Bradley board games I was playing concurrently and a hell of a lot more interesting than PONG or pinball.

Then again, I remember how excited I was when we got our first color tv, my first transistor radio, my first calculator, and my first digital watch too.

I am fine with this conclusion. Seems we are in some limbo at the moment - much like the 80-92 years sited above... not much going on but repetition and clones.

And fuck I miss mall arcades... but just for the nostalgia. I still hit up a Dave and Busters once every 6 months to find the retro machines sequestered in the back of the room and play Galaga or Centipede just for old-time's sake.

I remember how excited I was as a child also, because kids and teenagers are easily excited. Unfortunately, it wasn't until the SNES/PS1 period that home/video gaming broke into the mainstream in a massive way. Comics achieved that quickly, console gaming did not - possibly due to it being relatively cost prohibitive when compared to arcade gaming.

But then, I also separate PC gaming and console gaming and arcades when I talk about gaming because they were all very different things until very recently (in terms of the overall life of these markets). For a short period of time, arcades and home gaming converged with Pac-Man, Super Mario, etc - and then it diverged again. It didn't align until the Dreamcast, which most PC gamers ignored despite the fact it was a perfect clone of the NAOMI arcade platform. At that time people like us were mostly enamored with PC Gaming anyway, which is probably one of the many factors that nearly killed Sega and did kill the Dreamcast (though, the 32X and Saturn paved the way for that).

Anyway, getting back to the point, there was no bronze/stone age for comics, but I would argue there certainly was a time like that for home gaming.

Edit: 01101010, I bought a Taito Egret II (http://wiki.arcadeotaku.com/w/Taito_Egret_II) (along with the appropriate NAOMI, Neo-Geo, CPS II, and Kaneko Super Nova systems) about 6 years ago for a good reason - all of which included missing arcades, so owning what is arguably the best cabinet ever built filled that gap right quickly.

Edit 2: Apparently there was a bronze age for comic books, but most of us refer to it as the shitty, mcshitshit age that occurred when video games appeared on the scene (70s-early 80s). It's also an informal name and not nearly defining enough for the period. Which was AWFUL in comic books.

So are we awaiting the golden age of online gaming?  Or did I sleep through that?

Online gaming doesn't deserve ages.

But if we wanted to separate it, I suppose, MUDS -> Unreal Tournament 1 - and nothing has changed since, other than natural progression of technology (fiber optics vs number of telephone lines you can legally have in your house, for example) (and servers, number of players on any given box).

Online gaming is depressing, so fuckit, let's not go down that road.

Edit: World of Warcraft, on it's own a sort of special Golden Age for MMOGs simply due to penetration, but if anyone wants to argue that, I'm going to bring Farmville into the conversation and send this entire thread to fucking politics. So, admin veto on the topic being applied here.

 :heart:

MMOGs are like drinking.  You think you are having fun while you do it and then you wake up, look at the pictures your friends' took of you, read your text messages that you sent at 1AM and realize it really wasn't all that.

Then you forget those realizations and go do it all again at the next opportunity.

edit: changed "online gaming" to "MMOGs" since online gaming covers a lot more gaming that is still fun.

I was kind of thinking that the golden age would begin when they add multiplayer to DCSS webtiles.

I thought minecraft was the dawn of the online golden age.

I liked some of that crap!

Specifically, 1999 was the last big push for Mech sims, a genre I really miss nowadays.  Mechwarrior 3, Starsiege, and Heavy Gear 2 all came out that year.

Plus, it was the Dreamcast's launch year.  :heart:

Good List.

Well I don't want to bring the stupid debate into this thread and I know that it will sound very silly but Mass Effect 3 is the straw that broke the camel's back for me.

The more the debate about the game rages on the more clearly you can see that there is a fundamental disconnect between the people who buy and play games and the ones who make them or write about them.

The majority of the press is either apathetic about the issue (which is understandable) or outright condescending to the gamers. Look at the New Yorker piece about the issue if you want condescending with an extra helping of patronizing and the "The Verge" piece is issue 199 in the book of "I don't get what all the fuss is about, with the amount of hype no ending would be perfect" and the popular "well people just don't get it"

The ones that don't fall into category A or B insinuate that players just "want a happy end" and that they are angry because they haven't gotten one. They see that as wish fulfillment and ultimately as a sign of immaturity or entitlement. If the reviewer is extremely daring he might even compare it to people wanting to change the end of for example Romeo and Juliet.

I'm not of the opinion that Bioware should change the game but that no article delves into the real problems of the end, its glaring plot holes, the sudden change of theme that negates three games worth of experience and that they all seem to gloss it over as "while the game might have some issues" or "the end to such an epic can't please all fans" is rather disappointing. That nobody get's on Bioware's nerves for a day 0 DLC that is very clearly content that was in the game and is an integral part of the story. That nobody seems to check all of the bullshit the producer said to the press that turned out to be not true.

That nobody in the industry seems to get why people are upset is startling. The tone in most of the writing is "it's not the game that is broken it's you the player for not enjoying it like you're supposed to"

I just realized that I don't want to spend money on a hobby where even the people inside the business patronize and belittle me. I was burned out before ME 3. I simply don't like the direction games take with even more violence and sexism, with games that are now considered to be long if they take you 6 hours to finish and professionals who'll simply applaud anything while sneering at the people that they create those games or texts for.

It's just that ME 3 and the debate about it has shown me the ugly truth. That video gaming as a hobby is not even in the same ballpark as other things because in the end the people who develop games or write about them seem to hate gamers even more than people outside the business do.

Yeah I know that this is overly dramatic but it's something I felt for a long time and the latest debate just reinforced that feeling.

So I'll probably spend my time on other things in the near future, not that there is any shortage of entertainment to choose from.

Ok.

Meh, all I see are sequels, franchise titles and licences.  :grin:

Slightly more serious reply coming when I've got more time to post.

I think it's kinda pointless trying to come up with a best year in video games, partially because it forces you to try to factor in games that are popular but that you personally might not care for.  The '99 list contains a lot of stuff I just don't give a shit about, or stuff that I downright hated (Shenmue being a prime example due to the actual game sucking horribly, despite a lot of cool side stuff).  For me personally '97, 2000, '05, and '07 among others were better years, but I'm not really going to try arguing that any of them were the best year of gaming.

I'll 2nd 97 just for Diablo (yeah it was out for all of a day in 96 but all of the gameplay was 97).

What?  So much of what games are today was established prior to 1993, that it seems like a very arbitrary place to draw a line.  Street Fighter 2 for instance established back in 1991 is still the basis for most modern fighting games.  Likewise in 1992, Dune II established the RTS genre.  Final Fantasy IV was released in 1991.  Wolfenstien in 1992.  Long running franchises were established that were on their 3rd or 4th installment by the time 1993 rolled around (SMB, Castlevania, Mega Man, Phantasy Star, Zelda, the entirety of the Gold Box series including the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL, 7 or so Ultima games etc...).  You make it sound like developers were just stumbling around in the dark and then 1993 comes around and... what happened exactly that made the next few years noteworthy?  I'm not really seeing a lot in the release lists that wasn't directly building off games that had come before.

FF8 was awful. The rest of that list though, yeah, I agree.

I don't think we're in the dark ages yet, but considering the amount of money spent making games right now and the amount of genuinely interesting stuff coming from big studios per year being countable on one hand I think we may be getting there. Jillions of dollars from major publishers and maybe 3-5 games a year come out that're just great.

Note if you want to mention the indie scene: I treat all good indie games as complete flukes generally, because as of yet I don't really know an indie developer that has been able to bottle lightning twice; unless someone can remind me. I fully admit I may be forgetting something.

Maybe Frictional Games? The Penumbra series was really fucking rough around the edges so I dunno if I'd count it.

1999 was also a pretty spectacular year for film. I have a feeling both relate to the final glorious throes of the venture capital boom: There was a lot of money floating around for experimental projects, and a lot of creative people in the entertainment business were given the reigns to make exactly what they wanted to make without producers breathing down their necks. The tightening of the money supply since then has led to the drop in risk-taking that we lament in almost every field.

Huh.  Maybe the world really did end in 1999.  We just haven't figured it out yet.

It really wasn't.

Hey, don't hate on Deuce Bigalow.....

I don't think interest in each other's hobbies is all that important.  My spouse and I have different hobbies. Like, all of them are different. He likes to play bass, I like to play games. I don't much talk to bore him about games and he doesn't much bore me with talk about playing bass. He and I have other hobbies not in common too. We also have hobbies in common. We discuss those with each other.

Shared values and respect are very important. Shared hobbies, not so much. YMMV.

Oh yeah. This.

I had a college professor who blamed the passage of Prohibition on all the men being off to WWI and on the 19th amendment. Which couldn't have been, since Prohibition was the 18th amendment.

That does make some sense.  Obviously you can't have a 19th Amendment without first going through the 18th, so it should shoulder some of the blame.

Came to this thread late but it coincides with my recent recurrent feelings of malaise about the state of mmos.

While I don't want to go back to muds, I swear there was more innovation in the gameplay or premises or promise of mmos than what has since come about. I don't care about graphics or sound nearly as much as I care about interesting gameplay, and it seems that all the money goes into graphics and sound. I don't give a shit about realism. I will be happy playing a pretty game only if the gameplay is interesting; otherwise, it's like looking at nice photography, and there is no shortage of that.

Minecraft is a dandy game (I'd play on F13 server again if only it would get an update!) that I can still lose myself for hours in doing nothing much more than digging a quarry. I don't even play with texture packs. I do like the music but usually turn music off in all games (a habit I picked up in the 80s).

It seems like the innovation is in indie gaming, for the most part. I thought WoW would make everybody else step up, not that it would keep mmos stuck in 1999. I was mistaken.  It is hard to find the little-known gems, though, and I don't have patience to sift through crap for hours.

I am still waiting for somebody to make an mmo game worth playing that has great crafting. (ATiTD crafting with fun gameplay, for example). Or a fun world economy. Or spying and diplomacy.

So what happened in 1999, if that was the pinnacle of the promise of games? Was that when game devs got studios? Or game studios got investors? The money people decided to all clone instead of innovate. When _hasn't_ that been done in any industry? Still, it makes me sad.

Re the discussion on 20something women - As long as we're generalizing, my narrow-view, sexist 2 cents is that for some unknown reason it seems to me that there are more young women out to remake their partners than men. Maybe men just leave when they aren't satisfied; I haven't seen much of that among my friends and neighbors.

Trippy just updated it.

I don't use texture packs, either - I tried painterly but it took forever to compile one and I only liked about half of it. I listen to my vast google music hoard while playing minecraft (and now dcss).

I should clarify, in case anybody took it the wrong way, he was joking and not serious when he said that.  He was a hilarious old smart ass ex minor league baseball player who was one of the only openly liberal teahers in my very conservative town.  He actually used that line to comically goad the dumb preppy chicks in the back of class, who made everybody well aware they hated history and the teacher, into taking part in the discussion on womens rights.  It was rather funny watching them unable to articulate exactly why they deserved the right to vote (and kind of scary).

I was in a major rut for a while.  I think it was very related to just being totally and utterly burnt out on MMOs.  Now I've only been playing non-MMOs for a year or so and am feeling much happier with gaming.  I have played a bit here and there in the MMO space, but I've never tried to make it my 'main' game as it were.  Somewhat ironically I found these boards searching for a place to discuss MMOs, but a few years later and the genre is all but dead to me.  Still, that little voice in the back of my mind reminds me things like Planetside 2 are coming...

At any rate, I think its just figuring out which games that are out fit what you are looking for at the moment.  When I was trying frantically to find "the" MMO I was feeling very miserable about it, but after I came to the conclusion that maybe I didn't need one and I could just play whatever looked good I felt a lot better about the whole hobby.

A lot of this rings true for me too.  I tend to get stuck in gaming "ruts" where I play one game so much that it almost becomes an addiction/tedious and not fun anymore.  League of Legends was my most recent guilty party of that.  If I was sitting around, I'd play a game, if it was late and I wanted to go to bed, I'd play a game.  Usually it wasn't fun as much as something to pass the time.  I got to a point where half the time I'd finish a game and go "Why did I do that, that wasn't even fun."

But I switched gears and am feeling better about it now.  Playing some DotA 2, some Dwarf Fortress, some DCSS, some Harvest Moon, some Tribes:Ascend, played Mass Effect 3 etc. and I'm making an honest effort to game less as a whole since I'm working full time and a full time student as well.

I want to play an MMO that's a cross between Dwarf Fortress and Harvest Moon. Maybe with zombies.

Dwarf Moon Zombies?

...the name has potential.

I want to play a game that's a cross between Wurm/a Tale in the Desert or WWIIOL/BF1942.

Yes, I'm broken. 

my perfect mmo would be something like Dragon Age taken place in a dynamic world like FfH2 (where all the civs are, at least initially, controlled by AI), with a little Crusader King type intrigue to go around. I may have an unrealistic standard.  :oh_i_see:

As to the OP, after a very brief flirtation with WoW I'm sure I'm done with mmos. I don't like fps' (unless I'm playing with my brothers, which is a rare thing since they ridiculously decided to grow up and have kids), I didn't care for Morrowind so I haven''t tried the other games. I feel like I'm down to sports, rpgs and strategy games. Which isn't so bad because I could play FfH2 until Kucinich wins the presidency.

FWIW I couldn't stand Morrowind, but found Skyrim to be a good game.

Ditto.
We can dream.

I'd be in for this as well.   The more I think about it the more I realize I'm just way less interested in my characters in MMOs than I used to be.  I always was interested in the game world, but not I'm pretty much ONLY interested in the game world when it comes to MMOs.  The thing I love about WW2O isn't so much any particular aspect of the gameplay (although I think the sim stuff is neat and accessibility wasn't a problem for me personally) but rather the fact that if we move in and take a town, we...actually had to move in and take the town.  There was basically very little abstraction.  I loved that controlling certain towns and cities had strategic impacts beyond just the pure game mechanics too.  Taking control of an airfield somewhat close to the front lines drastically increased the viability of doing paradrops and bombing runs as a part of important battles, for example.  At the end of the day, all of that is just way more interesting to me than whether or not I got a new sword.

Still, there is some kind of internal contradiction because I like Diablo and I'm looking forward to Diablo 3 for my character progression/loot farming fix.