Anybody else done with video gaming?

[Azazel]

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. 

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...

[Azazel]

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.

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.
 

[tgr]

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

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.

[schild]

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

[ghost]

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.

[Azazel]

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.

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.

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  ...

[Fordel]

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.

Only 8% of them.

[Azazel]

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

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.

[ghost]

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.

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.

[Sky]

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

No need to share gaming devices.

[Sjofn]

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.

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

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.

[Velorath]

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

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.

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...

[Merusk]

In a large part, the problem is that most of the stories have already been told. 

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

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

There's nothing original coming out at all. 

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.

[Soln]

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.

[ghost]

In a large part, the problem is that most of the stories have already been told. 

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

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

There's nothing original coming out at all. 

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.

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.

[Baldrake]

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.

[pxib]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

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.)

[schild]

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.

No one cares.

[Baldrake]

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.

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.)

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.

[Cyrrex]

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.

[Kitsune]

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.

[Salamok]

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

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.

[naum]

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).

[shiznitz]

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.

[Llyse]

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.

[Draegan]

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

[squirrel]

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.

[dusematic]

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.

[K9]

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.

[ghost]

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?

[Yegolev]

Did you build giant teeth in Minecraft?

[ghost]

I suppose I could.   

[Yegolev]

It is truly the land of dreams.

[Sky]

The persistent Minecraft multiplayer worlds were very, very interesting.  Is the group here still playing without the monsters?

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?