Anybody else done with video gaming?

[DraconianOne]

1999 was also a pretty spectacular year for film.

It really wasn't.

[ghost]

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

[Xanthippe]

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

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.

[Xanthippe]

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.

Oh yeah. This.

[Xanthippe]

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?"

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.

[ghost]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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.

[Sky]

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).

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).

[Teleku]

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?"

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.

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).

[Malakili]

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.

[Thrawn]

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.

[Xanthippe]

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

[Polysorbate80]

Dwarf Moon Zombies?

...the name has potential.

[Nebu]

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

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

Yes, I'm broken. 

[Raguel]

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. 

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.

[Ingmar]

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

[Sky]

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

Ditto.

Which isn't so bad because I could play FfH2 until Kucinich wins the presidency.

We can dream.

[Malakili]

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

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

Yes, I'm broken. 

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.