
Tales of an Aging Gamer: We keep getting older, the games stay the same - cyanbane
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/tales-of-an-aging-gamer-why-dont-i-pick-up-a-controller-as-often-as-i-used-to/
======
NeedMoreTea
I sort of fit the mould described, so does my partner, but I think there's
more to it. We're in our 50s, and started with Defender and Tempest, even
Space Invaders in the arcades. :) Yes, I've definitely lost interest in MMOs,
any social gaming, and 95% of anything that is on consoles or counts as an AAA
title.

I _think_ that's as much because most of those games contain tons of what I'd
call cynical time and money sinks. Loot boxes, RNG designed to keep you
playing "enough" so force you to farm. Building weapons and armour, delays or
maps, even the whole gameplay around those $$ related additions. I don't like
open world games that are so tightly on rails it's almost like playing an old
laserdisc game like Dragon's Lair. The first couple of Call of Duty games were
very much this. So dull.

We mostly play indie titles and can spend as much time as we ever did. We
spend time because it's fun. If it's designed to take time, I'll try something
else. Sometimes, they'll take far more hours than the alleged AAA titles.
Factorio, Shenzen or some of the recent (and very welcome) resurrection of
turn based RPGs like Divinity and Pillars of Eternity have all felt far more
substantial than any major titles.

Of the majors I can think of Civ and Skyrim, and if Paradox count as a major
Europa Universalis. That really is about it. Of the rest, I couldn't care
less. I'd prefer Skyrim to be, or at least feel, more like the depth and
complexity of Morrowind.

I think we both tend to play in shorter spurts - real life shows up that bit
more.

How much of that is me aging, and how much the arrival of the ability to milk
revenue from every game? :)

~~~
techopoly
I've been playing games off and on a long time. I had pretty much lost
interest in social gaming, but Fortnite came around and it was fun enough for
me to keep at it. Now I have decent enough skill to at least compete with the
presumably younger people that sink hours and hours daily into it. And
interestingly, I find that I approach the game tactics with a bit more wisdom
and circumspection than I would've as a younger man, which can be an
advantage.

Now, I wholeheartedly agree on your assessment of many games being cynical
time and money sinks. It's really a shame. The coolest thing to me about a
video game is the world it creates. And I'd rather not my time in that world
be devoted to picking up coins everywhere. BioShock Infinite, I'm looking at
you. Horizon Zero Dawn, on the other hand, does have some monotony, but
overall the game is so enthralling you don't even mind. We need more games
like that.

------
dexwiz
I stopped calling myself a gamer years ago after I found myself playing less
than 2 new games a year. I realized it was like calling myself a movie buff
and only watching a handful a year.

Part of it is that games no longer challenge me like they once did. I played
through Breath of the Wild and of the 100 or so puzzle shrines, only a few
took more than 5 seconds to figure out their gimmick. However my girlfriend
played it and would routinely get stuck for multiple hours. She is smart, but
did not grow up playing games like I did. Her play style reminds me of how I
played through them as a child. I have just learned all the tricks, the little
hints that game developers put in to guide the player. BOTW is a well designed
game, but that means it uses standard patterns to teach the player, and I am
more attuned to those patterns than she is.

The other side of challenge in games is just grinding skill. Like learning all
the characters in Smash Brothers and how to counter them, or improving my aim
in Counter Strike. At the end of the day that is a more muscle memory based
skill, and I am just not interested in sinking the time into it.

Rogue likes are the closest to the challenge I’m looking for. But even those
eventually reduce to memorizing all the random events and forming a plan based
on possible future events.

------
hirundo
For me games are competence porn. The good ones create an illusion of
competence like movies create an illusion of motion. They've helped me realize
that I have a deep need for that feeling, one I don't seem to get enough of
from the few areas I'm actually competent in.

But then the bubble bursts. It turns out that not only am I not that competent
in reality, I'm not even competent at the game that just made me feel
competent. Five minutes on Twitch proves that.

So beyond a certain point it feels like a bad habit, and keeping it below that
point is about as easy as eating one Dorito.

~~~
barberousse
I've definitely been using games for the purposes of finding this sense of
comptency/accomplishment that I also desire and appear to be lacking in meat
space despite becoming a senior in three years

------
rndmize
I'm in my early 30s now, and while I agree with some points in the article (no
interest in competitive, minimal interest in twitch-reliant anything) I've
still been able to find a few games a year that really capture me.

2018 - Subnautica, God of War

2017 - Horizon Zero Dawn, Prey, Sundered

2016 - Hitman 2016, Life is Strange

2015 - MGS 5, Invisible Inc

2014 - The Long Dark, Factorio

I feel like there's quite a bit of variety out there (these days more then
ever), and while I've gradually dropped various genres from my list of "things
I'm willing to play", there's still enough to keep it as one of my primary
sources of entertainment. Roguelikes/roguelites, especially, have done well
the past few years (Slay the Spire, Dead Cells, FTL, Risk of Rain, Darkest
Dungeon, etc.) and provide high quality, no filler gameplay at low cost, and
often in convenient time increments.

------
goodroot
Ahh, yes this speaks right to me. I went through a loop in the latter half of
2018 trying all the best of modern gaming: World of Warcraft, God of War,
Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild...

I have always loved games and been an enthusiastic gamer, but there was
precious little fun to be had. My keyboard wary hands went through the
motions, and I sat on my arse.

I sold off all my systems and found my mind open wide for reading again. Now,
I have since discovered gog.com and it seems to be a splendourous portal for
gamers of age. Casual, strategic, relaxing... It is much more my speed.

For me, I am a gamer — but my tastes rapidly and deeply changed with time.
Smaller doses, more puzzling puzzles, and less comrades.

------
sevensor
In my case, the games literally stay the same. I keep coming back to a handful
of games. Master of Magic. Panzer General. XCOM2: Terror From the Deep.
Railroad Tycoon, Railroad Tycoon 2. Sid Meirs' Alpha Centauri. Heroes of Might
and Magic 2. The last game I've added to the rotation is FTL. I have next to
no time for gaming, so I'm very happy to fire up DosBox or Wine and spend 20
minutes with an old favorite.

What all those games have in common is that I know them very well, it's easy
to save at any point and come back later, and I can play them from my archive
without looking for a physical disc.

------
wccrawford
>Despite a wider variety than ever before, video games don’t have the same
effect on me as they used to.

I must have hit the jackpot then, because in my 40s, games absolutely feel to
me now like they used to. They continue to excite me and some of them even
still take over all my free time for a while, pushing out all my other hobbies
and what little social life I have.

Do all of them? Nope, but they didn't all hit me like that back in my teens,
either. Some of them are just astounding, though, and after playing one of
those games I actually get a little sad that no other game is there to take me
up to that same level of fun.

The most recent game for me like that was Ni No Kuno 2, which turned out to be
a lot better than I expected. (I hated the combat in NNK 1 and didn't complete
it, and wasn't expecting much from NNK 2.) So glad to be proven wrong there.

Other games like Uru, Fallout New Vegas, and The Witness have done the same in
the past, and there's usually at least 1 each year that does it for me, if not
more.

Many of the games that don't hit that level of obsession still are a ton of
fun, too.

------
andrewmcwatters
An interesting side-effect emerges. The total video game backlog stretches far
back into history, with many games from the past 10 years alone still being
relevant today.

As a single data point to add to the discussion, while Call of Duty: Black Ops
4 is available for sale, I chose to purchase Modern Warfare 2 instead, for me,
my wife, and a few friends for below the cost of a single license for the
former game. The graphics and gameplay are considerably richer, in my opinion,
than PUBG and Fortnite. The graphics are comparable.

This is a staggering revelation to me. To get something dramatically better in
terms of visual fidelity, I would have to purchase a game like Battlefield V.
But the cost is unappealing in a global market with several industries
increasing prices across the board.

I'm searching for better values in a world with increasing costs, and finding
that many people are still playing these older games, in part because they're
not much different than new blockbusters.

Additionally, I'd rather not pay 60 USD for what has been called at times a
"beta." I'm good.

~~~
leonroy
You actually only have to go back a year or two to pick up AAA titles for £5
or so.

I recently picked up Batman Arkham Knight for £4 and Doom for ~£7. Both
absolutely phenomenal games, graphics that rival anything out in 2018 and of
course all those nasty PC port bugs totally squashed.

It also means building a PC capable of doing them justice is a little more
affordable too.

------
lordnacho
There's a statistical issue with the study he quotes, I didn't dig deep enough
to find a conclusion:

Is the study longitudinal, ie does it follow gamers as they get older?

You want to do that, because you don't want to confuse the issue of what
cohort the gamer belongs to. You want to differentiate between "people like
games less as they age" and "people who were born in 1980 like games less than
people born in 1990".

In my own experience, once you have kids, that's it. You can't invest in any
game that takes time to learn. Before kids, you could have a 2nd job healing
or tanking for 3-8 hours every evening after your real life job. Or working on
your shooting skills. Or watching RTS videos.

Now I can do casual gaming, which works when you're commuting, but it's not
nearly the same commitment.

~~~
alleyshack
I would also like to see more about the effects of generation/cohort on this
issue. We took our Vive and our Switch to my parents' for the holidays, and my
nearly 70-year-old parents really enjoyed them. They both _really_ got into
Beat Saber, while my dad picked up Mario Kart and Smash really fast, and my
mom is diving into Divinity: Original Sin 2 (and has been playing Bejeweled
and Chuchel on her own).

They were born in the early 50s, long before computers and consoles were
anything like mainstream. They watched us game as kids, but it wasn't until
very recently that either of them has actually tried playing much. They're
both responding to games like teenagers, but that's anecdotes, not data.

I'd love to know if it's an issue of age alone, age+responsibilities (i.e., do
30- to 40-year-olds who don't have kids or other time-consuming
responsibilities shift their preferences the same way equivalent-aged parents
do?), or _age of their gaming career_ (i.e., do people who pick up gaming in
their middle years or later start with the same interests as young gamers and
gradually age out of them with time, or do they start with the interests of
"old" gamers?).

------
jatsign
I'm almost 40, and haven't really played video games since college. No time,
no interest..and I'm not really that great at video games anyway.

For christmas, I bought my kids a Switch, and I've definitely been playing it
way more than them. Just finished Mario Odyssey, and it was a lot of fun, and
I think I may be addicted. Getting the new Zelda later today...

I think my brain just needed the right game and some time off. 20 years did
the trick.

~~~
pdimitar
In my huge comment in this thread I make the argument that games that don't
try to pull you in are more appealing to older gamers.

I don't want business to try and addict me. I don't even want character
progression or saves of any kind -- except your story progress.

I feel part of console games and a lot of handheld consoles -- and older-
generation games like Half Life, Quake and Mortal Kombat -- get it right.

Nowadays most games try their damnest to latch onto our sunk cost fallacy
brain vulnerabilities.

~~~
dorchadas
I've found that as I've gotten older (only 26, mind you), I've turned to more
single-player games. In fact, the only multiplayer games I play regularly are
_Path of Exile_ , Smash (and I play mostly solo mode, or against friends
locally) and Splatoon (which is the only shooter I like). While I don't mind
grinding for levels to beat a boss and such, I don't want to have to grind my
technical skills at the game just to have fun. And, since that's all a lot of
online games are, it gets extremely frustrating and tiresome really quickly.
Plus, I've found that a lot of single player games are also less likely to try
to tempt you into buying stuff -- like hell am I going to buy anything (DLC
excluded, of course) when I'm already paying $60 for the base game! And,
becuase of that, I think they don't try as hard to make them super addictive,
since they're not counting on many sells from that aspect of them; sadly, I've
also found enjoyable single player games getting less and less common...

~~~
pdimitar
Same here for me and my wife. We only haven't bought the PS4 Pro because we
can't find enough place to put the couch but we're working on that.

Many modern PC games imitate the mobile games monetization model and are
increasingly hostile to any semblance of long-lasting community. Throw in the
mix the clueless multiplayer implementations of many games where people are as
toxic as it can get and it's easily understandable why so many people leave
those games when the novelty wears off.

We're gonna transition fully to console [and partially to PC] single player
games with good stories and graphics (Lara Croft, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of
War come to mind) -- as soon as we handle our logistics problem.

------
mothsonasloth
I am really struggling to enjoy games at the moment, the last memorable ones
have been

* Arma 3 because its a sandbox and I can script my own missions etc.

* Doom reboot, purely for the nostalgia

For older games from my childhood like Half Life, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon and
Command and Conquer. I might dust them out for an hour or two but the novelty
goes away quickly, maybe its because of ageing graphics or I don't remember
them as I used to.

Another factor is that working on a PC all day makes its less desirable for me
to then come home and sit on my home PC and play games.

The reboot situation is interesting as it gives companies a chance to make
money out of an old IP and the fanbase can rekindle some of their younger days
playing those games.

~~~
jdbernard
> I might dust them out for an hour or two but the novelty goes away quickly

This has been my experience as well. Over the last few years over and over
again I'll start games I've played before but within an hour or two I've lost
interest in playing. I remember enough of the overall plot and mechanics that
the only thing that still sticks out to me is the repetitive, grindy bits of
the game (and all games have them). A few times I've turned to cheating to
level characters, unlock stuff, bypass all the grind parts and just enjoy the
story or game mechanics, but even then it's not as interesting as it used to
be.

------
kop316
I can identify with playing games less as I age, and I agree with a lot of
what they are saying. When I was in high school, A lot of my hobbies/social
activity were built into schooling, so at the end of the day, I had time to
come home and play.

As an adult, I have social circles both within and outside of my job, a
relationship (though she likes playing video games too), I have new hobbies,
and hobbies that I can't do at work. I also have time and money to be able to
go out and do new things that I couldn't do when I was younger.

As a result, when I do play, usually it is in 30 to 45 minute spurts, usually
the weekend. Even then, it is usually a social thing. My siblings and I have
Switches, and we have been bonding over playing online with each other (we
don't live near each other), or I will play with my significant other.

The competitive one is an interesting thing. I have never been a competitive
person, but I think the competitiveness drops off because off bad experiences.
I completely stopped playing Magic the Gathering because of dealing with toxic
players, and I played online with strangers for exactly one session, and that
was soured by toxic gamers. I imagine a lot of others have had similar
experiences, and that sours that sort of competition for the majority of
people.

EDIT: I forgot to add, being on a computer for 8 hours a day at work also
really kills my desire to stare at another screen for even more time.

~~~
zrobotics
I can concur with the lack of patience for dealing with other players. I spent
entirely too much time with counterstrike, but having a prepubescent kid call
me a noob because my skills have atrophied is the last thing i want to do in
my spare time.

I've actually gravitated towards single-player, mainly due to time
constraints. That is one of the reasons I still love FTL, I can actually do an
entire playthrough in one sitting. And the only multi-player game I play is
Elite Dangerous, which is boredom personified (and I haven't seen another
player in game in over 9 months).

I don't agree with the doom and gloom tone of the article, however. In my
experience, there has never been a better time to be a gamer with non-
mainstream tastes. Especially if you are on PC, the indie market and
kickstarter have revived things like CRPGS.

~~~
kop316
I agree %100 with the indie market. I think the two most played games on my
Switch are Overcooked 1/2 and Stardew Valley. Overcooked 2 has been awesome in
that my siblings, our significant others, and I can get on a phone chat then
play it as if we are on the couch together. We have been carving out a night a
week so we can do it, and it has been a great experience.

Sadly, we wanted to do that with Super Mario Party and Super Smash Bros (we
played those games extensively as kids), and both of those games online mode
are hampered to the point that we tried playing it once, then going back to
Overcooked.

------
kris-s
If this article resonates with you, here are some games I'd recommend you try.
They are all indie puzzle games, they can all be easily picked up and put down
in a moment, and they're all fairly cross platform.

\- Monument Valley

\- A Good Snowman Is Hard to Build

\- Mini Metro

\- Braid

\- The Witness

\- Snakebird

\- Gunpoint

~~~
Reedx
All great recommendations. More indie gems:

\- Spelunky

\- Don't Starve

\- Factorio

\- Stardew Valley

\- Faster than Light

\- Kerbal Space Program

\- Dungeon Warfare (if you're a TD fan)

\- Return of Obra Dinn

\- Cities: Skylines

\- Frostpunk

\- All Zachtronic's games

\- RimWorld

\- Darkest Dungeon

~~~
danielbln
Factorio was great at first, but at some point it felt like work. I'm a
systems engineer, and I begun asking myself why I'm doing this, when it's
basically what I do all day long.

------
rc-1140
I could keep playing shooters for as long as my hands could hold out as I
aged, but all of the new ones are so bad. The last shooter that I saw that
wasn't a student project/impeccably tiny indie venture and actually managed to
capture the spirit of shooting while applying good modernization was DOOM 4
(the DOOM reboot). I'm super excited for Rage 2 and DOOM Eternal, and I say
that as someone who was bored to tears by Rage 1 to the point where I put 45
minutes into it and stopped. The last good multiplayer shooter was Tribes
Ascend, and that had plenty of flaws apart from being developed by Hi-Rez.

Meanwhile, JRPGs are there for me as the shooter market has been swallowed up
by the battle royale genre and Overwatch. If anything, I'm enjoying JRPGs more
now than I did when I was younger. Indie (FTL, Immortal Redneck) and Doujin
(Momodora, 100% Orange Juice) games have also been coming along in a big way
as well. Age of Empires 2 is there for me in the modern day on modern systems
with the HD release and the expansion packs, but it and Brood War Remastered
seem to be the exceptions for RTS rather than the norm. I also picked up Smash
Brothers for the first time in give-or-take 15 years, and I'm having a blast.
There's so much work being put in to making these games fun.

I wish shooters were as interesting as they used to be. Even relatively new
stuff like Tribes Ascend was a blast; easy enough to get into, but with enough
of a skill ceiling to really sink your teeth into it. If anything, getting
older has just left me for a want for something other than CounterStrike and
far better than battle royales and Overwatch.

------
honkycat
I am not QUITE at this person's point yet, as I am currently 29. But I am
struggling to find a game I enjoy lately.

I would argue that games have not stayed the same. Video games have become
aggressively monetized at the expense of the consumer. Companies are now
looking to exploit a small percentage of core users, "whales", hoping to get
them to spend hundreds of dollars on microtransactions.

There is also a focus on "live services". Basically releasing the game as a
poorly constructed product, and then slowly updating it over years and years
while charging for the updates along the way. Look at the most played games
right now, and you will notice very few of them are from 2018, but rather are
older games that have been continually updated.

Some examples:

1\. The other day I logged back into my Destiny 2 account after lapsing over
the holiday seasons, and to my dismay I discover that I am now expected to pay
an additional $20 on top of the $80 I have already paid total for the game.

2\. So, I decide to log into a game that had launched around a year ago but
was not in a state I considered acceptable, Battletech. I figured more time in
the oven would make it better. BOOM. $20 season pass, otherwise I am locked
out of new parts of the game.

3\. So I switch over to Call of Duty Black Ops: 4, a game I had not played in
a few months but thought was fun enough when I started playing. In the time
between they added gameplay affecting micro-transactions AND a $20 "expansion
pack" that consisted of a few levels.

4\. Last year's Star Wars BattleFront 2 was LAMBASTED due to being a full-
priced $60 product which monetized all progression with an absurdly expensive
loot-box scheme. After people did the math they realized it could cost
hundreds of dollars to acquire some of the characters in the game, and that
the drops from the loot boxes heavily influenced gameplay.

Video games have become excessively monetized. Companies have realized they
can make more money by making the same games over and over again. Gone is the
risky, interesting "AA" games of the last generation. Now the only games are
being made are extremely expensive to produce and obnoxiously monetized "AAA"
games. Now that these companies have gotten a taste of the loot-box whale
money, they do not want to go without it.

Take a look at the work done by Jim Sterling for a more detailed analysis.

edit, adding more thoughts:

Another thing is that they are all the same games. Low TTK shooters turned
into team shooters transformed into Battle Royale games.

There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore. Games with
interesting movement mechanics. It is all low TTK tactical shooters. Low TTK
is an equalizer between low-skill and high-skill players. Even a very bad
player can get a point if they sneak up on a good player.

The thing is, the mobile game industry is RAKING IN CASH and the AAA game
industry wants a piece of that action. It is becoming hard to justify creating
Call of Duty 5 if you can make a lame gatcha mobile game and make more money.
Investors want that mobile game money so the big game companies are getting
desperate chasing that dragon.

~~~
stonith
Sorry to focus on a single point from a longer post, but...

> There is nothing like Unreal Tournament or Quake anymore. Games with
> interesting movement mechanics.

Both Paladins and Overwatch have characters with interesting movement, to the
point where almost every Overwatch character has a movement ability. Both are
following in the footsteps of TF2 movement. In contrast, the funky movement
mechanics in Quake weren't always explicitly designed and were often much more
difficult to execute properly - that's fine in a symmetric game but causes
balance issues in anything asymmetric.

Fortnite and CoD have both added a grappling hook, and Fortnite in particular
seems to be experimenting quite a bit with movement via jump pads, planes,
trolleys, bouncey-shardy-things (you can tell I don't play it...). The latest
Spiderman game has seen universal praise for the swinging movement. My
personal favorite game of 2018 was Wizard of Legend, which has a no-cooldown
dash ability - something that would normally break balance.

Anyway, I think I'm just trying to say there's a ton of experimentation with
movement mechanics in modern games.

~~~
honkycat
I was gold rank in Overwatch and I just did not end up enjoying the game.
There is a lot to love in the game, but I stand by what I said.

Compare Overwatch and Paladins to Quake or Tribes and the differences are
stark.

The movement mechanics in Overwatch are less interesting TO ME than what we
had in the past.

> Both Paladins and Overwatch have characters with interesting movement, to
> the point where almost every Overwatch character has a movement ability.

A movement ability like "Jump high and then walk very slowly" or "Boost jump
and then glide with pack" are not particularly interesting to me. Nor are they
experimental They had been done many times before. The entire game is
basically a reworked TF2.

In Quake, everyone had access to the rocket jump and plasma climb. Everyone
could strafe jump and move at absurd speeds ALL THE TIME and it made the game
CRAZY FAST and fun. Other than Quake live, I cannot think of a modern
competitive game that does this.

In Overwatch, you are still mostly walking around at a snails pace waiting for
your ult to charge.

> Both are following in the footsteps of TF2 movement.

I would argue that TF2 walked in the footsteps of TFC, which was literally
spawned from the Quake mod Team Fortress, which utilized the weapon and
movement mechanics of Quake in a class based system.

Really, when you get down to it, many of the weapons and abilities in
Overwatch can trace their lineage to Quake.

Off the top of my head: Junkrat has the grenade launcher, Pharah has the
classic rocket launcher, Sombra has the teleporter, widow has the rail gun,
Torbjorn has the shotgun, Bastion has the machine gun, Winston has the chain
gun, Symmetra has the lightning gun.

> In contrast, the funky movement mechanics in Quake weren't always explicitly
> designed

This is a misconception. They discovered strafe jumping in Quake 1 and then
ported it to the sequels because it was FUN and people liked it. I agree they
were more difficult to execute, but if you play the game you get then hang of
it very quickly: The difficulty is greatly exaggerated.

> and were often much more difficult to execute properly - that's fine in a
> symmetric game but causes balance issues in anything asymmetric.

This is totally fair, and I agree that they are different games. I just prefer
the old-style Quake games to the new hero shooters. And you cannot deny there
have been a LOT of them haha

Additionally, these movement mechanics were fun ON THEIR OWN! I still enjoy
hoping into a Quake Live race server from time to time to see how fast I can
go.

> Fortnite and CoD have both added a grappling hook, and Fortnite in
> particular seems to be experimenting quite a bit with movement via jump
> pads, planes, trolleys, bouncey-shardy-things (you can tell I don't play
> it...). The latest Spiderman game has seen universal praise for the swinging
> movement.

Fortnite and CoD have the occasional opportunity to utilize different movement
mechanics. This is very different from the deeply integrated movement
mechanics of Quake and Tribes.

Additionally, they are EXACTLY the battle royale and fast TTK realistic
shooters I called out elsewhere in my comment.

> My personal favorite game of 2018 was Wizard of Legend, which has a no-
> cooldown dash ability - something that would normally break balance.

WoL is a teeny little indie game. Great game, but far outside of mainstream
gaming.

------
akerro
Games are also getting worse and worse. Less hacks, mods, cheats, no free
demos any more, instead we have DRM which decreases performance by 20% for
paying customers, micro transactions, pay-to-win, kids screaming at us, less
welcoming and tolerant players who kick you for going to bathroom during a
game break, more platform locking, ads and activity tracking... Internet or
service provide is down? Screw you, you can't play single-player!

~~~
bbeekley
Games in general are definitely not getting worse. There are more excellent
indie and medium-size studio games coming out than ever. If you don't like
those things you complain about, play other games.

Even the big studios are starting to learn that pay-to-win and crazy
microtransactions turn people off-- the business model for Fortnite, the
biggest game out there, is pretty user-friendly by providing a free game with
100% of gameplay available for $0. All purchases are cosmetic and (I believe)
aren't locked in lootboxes. EA famously rolled back their microtransaction
models last year after a few bad releases.

I love that studios are trying out new business models, even if some suck.
Some of my favorite games (Counterstrike and Crusader Kings 2) use user-
friendly "microtransactions" to continue 6+ years of development and feedback.

~~~
akerro
>EA famously rolled back their microtransaction models last year after a few
bad releases.

Because their business model was set as illegal in several EU countries.

------
dfxm12
I wonder if the "Aging Gamer" described is the title is really a gamer, i.e.
someone passionate about videogames, or just some kind of consumerist who only
keeps up with whatever is marketed towards him or her.

I play videogames, but I can't call myself a gamer. Maybe I was back when I
had free time to practice fighting games, and played competitively. Maybe I
was a gamer when I played a bunch of niche titles, regardless of genre. Maybe
I was a gamer when I collected rare games and hardware. I'm certainly not a
gamer now though.

I think about the decline of time I spend on gaming. A lot of it comes down to
not having enough time (with a full time job and other interests I didn't have
when I was younger), but I'll make time for the right game. I think the
article jives with this, but I'm not sure if this is specific to gaming. It
reminds me of a similar article I read on here a few years ago that talked
about how after a certain age, people stop seeking out new music as well.

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fusiongyro
I have fond memories of playing Final Fantasy II as a kid. I downloaded
Octopath Traveller on the Switch and couldn't get through the introduction I
was so bored. Going back and playing Final Fantasy on the NES Classic, I can't
believe I used to have so much time on my hands and so much patience to play
this stuff.

Then again, I've gotten deeply in chess lately...

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aceBacker
If they just took a popular game and used the engine like skyrim, fallout,
gears, halo, etc. Just pump out more of the same. Using new maps. Keep the
same enemies even. I'd buy it, a lot of people would. Why are they leaving
money on the table?

~~~
dorchadas
Because they can get more money by addicting (young) people to lootboxes and
skins.

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jdlyga
I really don't care about keeping up anymore. I'm just playing the games I
enjoy. Lately, it's been Dragon Quest XI, Phoenix Wright Spirit of Justice,
Metroid Samus Returns, and 20xx.

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dragonsngoblins
Games have decidedly not stayed the same for me. Even if we don't include
industry trends of microtransactions and dlc there have been major changes.
Just to name a few:

* Shooters are more multiplayer focused now by a large margin

* Ubisoft style open world games have become a huge trend

* The RTS genre rarely sees entries anymore

* Space Fighter games are less common these days by a lot as well

------
louhike
As a not so old gamer (30), I do find there is a big change which is important
for me and a lot of people: games are more "safe" for minorities. There's less
sexism and racism. You see plenty of games about LGBT or illegal migrants
struggles. There's more and more strong female characters (Kassandra in the
last Assassin's Creed is so great). So it might a problem of generation.

EDIT: this is a response to the comments here, not the article.

~~~
Rooster61
I'm of the same generation as you, and I'm not sure I agree. If this were
true, I think we'd see this in other forms of media as well. A good
counterexample would be the new Doctor Who series. That show is getting
utterly eviscerated by longtime fans (of our generation mostly) that hate it
BECAUSE they are pushing minority based plotpoints/storylines.

Putting on my subjective cap, I personally don't like the move towards such
content. Nothing to do with the actual underlying messages (Samus has and
probably always will be my favorite Nintendo character, and I actually don't
mind the new Doctor), but rather the hamfisted, uninspired, force fed way it
is delivered these days. If I were the audience this was targeted towards, I'd
be fairly pissed as they are wrapping these good messages in a package that
requires zero critical thinking.

------
menacingly
I'm sure I'm missing something about the business, but I've wondered why you
so frequently only get a year of paid DLC for a title. They burn a lot of
resources making a game, then abandon it to do it all over again. They'll
repackage Skyrim a half-dozen times to sell it again, obviously people are
playing it. Why aren't they pushing new DLC for these people?

~~~
Semaphor
It's what Paradox does with their games. Personally, I love their model and so
do many others. But many also complain about this.

------
parf02
Overwatch is the only game during my adult life that has given me the same
level of enjoyment from video games like when I was a kid.

~~~
zeroego
Second this. After years of not playing anything, this was the game that
brought me back into the fold.

~~~
parf02
I genuinely like how they implemented loot boxes in Overwatch. It ONLY gives
cosmetic items and delivers enough currency that feels like it rewards you for
playing.

~~~
zeroego
Yeah it stands in stark contrast to the pay-to-win model a lot of games are
incorporating nowadays. I also really love how all the new
updates/maps/characters have been completely free.

------
nwhatt
I wonder if Star Citizen is/was so successful in raising money - because it
plays perfectly into this demographic.

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taf2
Interesting, I don't play as much as I used but instead I watch a few
different gamers I enjoy who play the games I used to play a lot. Mostly I
don't play them as much now since I'm too slow - either my work day has
drained too much out of me or literally my reflexes are not as good nor my
vision.

~~~
all2
With the brain its "use it or lose it". I was relatively good at CS:S. I was
backup in a few matches for some pros. Then I took a break for 10 years. When
I went back to it, I sucked all over again. With twitch-reflex games it is not
at all like riding a bike.

It took me a month of 8 hours a day one summer to get marginally ok. I'm
guessing it would take me a similar amount of time now (15 years out). I don't
really want to take that time, though.

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Thaxll
Games are still games, what do people expect? Also the cost of creating games
has skyrocket but the price is the same for the last 20 years. I think most
people forget that an average 35y/o has 20 years of video game experience,
it's not like he's going to discover anything new.

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fb03
"Season pass". that's the cancer of current video games.

------
tkjef
i've been playing Rocket League. that has kept my interest, is skills-based,
takes time to learn, and has a sports-like element to it that is pleasant. for
anyone that doesn't know you drive a car around on a soccer field and play
soccer (or hockey or basketball). and you can fly through the air with boosts
that can get very complex.

------
jungler
Early 30's here. By chance I got really into Fortnite from nearly the moment
the BR mode launched, but have also "quit" it multiple times, most recently
yesterday. It has an interesting core idea for PVP multiplayer(build as you
fight) that is submerged beneath a morass of marketing-driven ideas(BR
gameplay, vehicles, rare overpowered items, etc.). But they keep changing the
game at a reckless pace, so I keep coming back. On the most recent occasion I
was really enjoying the "high explosives 50v50" mode which removed all the
regular guns and most of the items, leaving a very Quake-esque experience
where you had grenades, rocket launchers and grappling hooks, plus building to
shield yourself, in the context of a large teams battle.

But then they swapped it out for another mode yesterday and I got pissed off
by the hitscan and sniper weapons(which of course are the preference of
cheaters). It was a much less satisfying experience.

I've heard this about marketing other media: that it's hard to target older
audiences because their tastes diverge more. Teenagers remain teenagers each
year, and will reliably fall for the same scenarios and stories with a fresh
coat of paint. And I don't think games are any different, in that games where
you shoot things, go on a quest or adventure, solve puzzles, gain power and
wealth, and compete against others have all been reliably popular in every
era, in a multitude of permutations. A popular, accessible video game has to
have an appropriate mix of fantasy (what you imagine you do) and reality (the
actions you actually perform which should cohere with the stated fantasy). A
mismatch of the two makes for incoherent gobbledegook.

So the challenge game developers face(and aren't fully aware of, since most
folks trying their hand at it are still young game fans themselves) is in
doing something that's actually differentiated while maintaining a compelling
marketing message. If it leans too much on the usual tropes, any kind of
underlying design wizardry is obscured. If it looks too "weird", it becomes
hard to engage with on the level of fantasy.

After getting annoyed with Fortnite last night, I sampled a few other recent
games. First I tried free-to-play "Dreadnought", in which you control a giant
spaceship in slow-paced team battles. I got annoyed immediately by the opacity
of the strategy: it threw a bunch of different classes of ships at me and told
me to pick one and not worry, basically. The game was bulked up with systems
upon systems that were clearly intended to hold my attention for the long
term, but without knowing what to focus on, and not really feeling the core
fantasy in what I had right in front of me, I just played it like it was
homework and then stopped after about an hour. This is a very typical reaction
I have to AAA experiences: they're overconfident in their ability to stall me
by leaning on levels and unlocks and item loadouts and so forth, instead of
communicating something about how I should start _appreciating_ the game.

Then I went on itch.io and after browsing tried "Skitopia", a ski resort
management sim. Even though it's an indie project at a proof-of-concept level
of development, has almost no features and started experiencing GC thrashing
after about 50 guests, I was having a good time building chairlifts and ski
runs.

Indie games would be amazing if they could all just hit the mark like that,
but that's the exception, of course. Most of them lose their way in trying to
be mini-AAA experiences, so they both communicate nothing and do it poorly.

------
pdimitar
There are many factors at play.

\---------- 1\. Gaming is an escapism.

That's why many people hesitate to call themselves gamers or even admit it in
certain (more conservative) social settings. Thinking back, gaming was a chill
activity for me only a single-digit percent of the time and now at 38 y/o I am
ashamed that I didn't admit that to myself earlier. And yes, many people still
view "gamers" and teenagers with no cares at all. They haven't noticed that
the world changed and these teenagers now play together with their kids. And
that even company CEOs have admitted to be gaming.

\---------- 2\. Games aren't increasing in diversity or quality.

Quite the contrary, even the big AAA studios drop the ball and start milking
nostalgia -- recent releases like Fallout 76 and WoW's latest expansion Battle
for Azeroth are a prime example. Them not being quality games is not an
universal truth of course but if you visit any gaming forum outlet you'll
quickly discover they are a very divisive topic. This wasn't true even as back
as 2-3 years ago for many games (the above two included).

\---------- 3\. I'm glad the article debunked that your abilities start to
deteriorate at your 30s.

At 38 I can still pop in a random Quake3 server and absolutely dominate the
others there. Many times they teamed up 5v1 against me and still lost on total
score. As you get "older" (if 30s are "being old") your abilities can even
self-perfect -- my wife several times noted that when I played a game for a
week and quit it and then got back to it 6 months later I was suddenly
extremely good at it and better than her who played it casually for those 6
months. It's as if your brain has been periodically replaying your experience
with the game and gradually perfected the schemata that makes you much more
efficient at the game. Probably while you slept.

\---------- 4\. Aggressive monetization.

As the stable income from selling games dwindles, many businessmen imagine
that they are forced to introduce microtransactions or release half-finished
games and then basically make you pay for a DLC that costs as much as the
original game itself for you to get the "full" game -- this isn't an
undeniable fact but many feel that way about a lot of EA / Ubisoft games.

Whatever the reason, microtransactions are killing the desire of many to play.
We the humans get emotionally invested in everything we do. The fact that the
businesses want to prey on the sunk cost fallacy, or nostalgia, or bait-and-
switch tactics, is something that even people at 20 years old now reliably
detect and try to stay away from.

The customers are getting smarter and the business makes less and less effort
to market / advertise their games in an appealing way. Cleavage shots or shiny
costumes and mounts don't seem to be cutting it anymore -- or at least not so
well as the businesses would like.

\---------- 5\. Our priorities change, yes.

I ain't gonna bore anyone with sob stories but I had a pretty awful life and
learned helplessness is something I have to fight my every waking second
(people keep telling me I do an awesome job and I honestly can't believe it
and that's not a fake modesty, I really can't; many other examples abound). At
certain point you just sit down and start thinking what you are doing with
your life -- and time, and energy. That the popular breeds of gaming lost most
of its appeal is indeed a gradual process as the article assesses it to be.

And I indeed don't care about competition, like at all. Nobody can tempt me
with "you're just afraid I am gonna beat you". I just shrug and say "you're a
champion, are we done with this discussion?".

Me and my wife recently chatted at length about our diminished pleasure in
games and concluded that we are gonna buy a PS4 Pro and a very comfy couch and
probably won't touch a multiplayer game more than a few times a year. It's
just how it is. She gets a lot of calming influence from just trying to figure
out the next Lara Croft puzzle or a movement sequence so the character cat get
somewhere important. And watching her play sometimes, I get the same vibes.

That, and some casual and non-engaging games like Smash Bros. You can just hop
in, play a bit, get out. Which brings me to my last point...

\---------- 6\. Games try very hard to pull you in, addict you and make you
feel like they are your life.

There are plenty of gullible human beings that fall for that and they are
probably the reason why many modern games even survive.

As an "older" gamer I miss the experience of starting a game, typing a
nickname somewhere, joining a server, playing for how much you want, and then
getting out. No central servers, no character progression, no worries that
somebody paid their way to them dominating you.

Games like Half Life, Quake 2 and 3, Re-Volt and Star Wars Episode 1 Racer
(two of the best racing games I ever played!), and the fighting games like
Mortal Kombat were perfect for this. They had a compelling gameplay but didn't
try to tie you to anything. If you wanted to play, you came back. There were
no psychological tactics to make you come back for more. They already sold you
the game -- whether you are gonna play 1 hour in total or waste your life in
it doesn't bother them.

\----------

I believe for many mature games this is the strongest factor. Stop trying to
make us believe your game is our life. Make a good game. Make paying only for
cosmetics or minor quality-of-life improvements. Put in good net code.

Gamers will come. You won't have to do absurd marketing campaigns all over
YouTube. People will come to you by word of mouth if your game is not scummy.

But IMO gaming will have to almost die until it gets back to what made it
popular and awesome in the first place.

