I was obsessed by games when I was kid. They've almost lost their grip on me. Even when I go actively looking for some distraction I can't find anything good. There has been one exception in the last couple of years, minecraft.
There's virtually no innovation, but I'm not sure that's the reason, I think you just move on. I remember a crossover point where I looked at realistic graphics and thought "I could just go outside and go for a run" and then did.
Innovation doesn't please shareholders nearly as much as re-hashing the same banal gameplay mechanics with slight tweaks every year or so (Call of Duty). The industry did it to themselves when they sold their soul to the casuals. I have little sympathy for them, but perhaps it's better for me personally.
I make time for a few games a year, and call it good. I'll get hooked from time to time, but never like I used to.
"Innovation" doesn't please shareholders because it doesn't sell games It's for the same reason that P&G or Nestle shareholders don't prioritize "innovative" food products. Games are a mature market. To first approximation, buyers want better versions of what they already like.
Sure, there's the occasional innovative hit (Portal, Minecraft, Angry Birds) that drives a bunch of profits for an lucky (usually independent) developer. But the overwhelming share of revenue in the industry goes to the rehashed genre pieces like CoD or Skyrim. If you want to blame someone, blame the buyers.
I think "Blame the Buyers" is a false notion of how powerless we are to make change for society. This is equivalent to "making a better horse" as opposed to building an affordable car.
Too many people misinterpret the 4Steps/Lean methodology to just do the startup equivalent of P&G's incremental "innovation" - instead of trying to be the Unreasonable Man that we all should be striving to be.
I certainly don't disagree there. I was speaking to the much narrower point about what "shareholders want" in games. Game studios produce copycat games because copycat games sell more copies.
There will always be room for the next minecraft. Just don't look to the studios to produce it.
Assuming that we're talking about basically the same group of target gamers - if an indie studio makes MineCraft and the other Call of Duty 10 - then blame the shareholders... or the shareholder model which directs effort into low-risk / low-"innovation" games. The buyers like new things - the studios put (by having shareholders) profit over making new games.
Personally, I got sick of feeling cornered whenever an authority figure and/or girl asked me what I do for fun. I never really stopped enjoying video games, I just saw one too many pairs of glazed-over eyes and almost-imperceptibly curled lips and decided it wasn't worth the stigma or the opportunity cost (lost 42 pounds since I quit!).
I think most of the stigma has gone away now. Admittedly I run in tech heavy social circles, but many of the people I know either still play video games or stopped due solely to lack of time and envy those who do still play.
Of course, you can have more than one hobby. I still play video games when I have time and the mood strikes me, but I also play Go and that is what I bring up when asked. (Not due to concerns about social stigma, I am just hoping they will also play Go and we can arrange a game.)
I mean, male peers were never a problem. It just so happens that male peers are the group of people in whose opinion I am least invested.
Both older (read: more powerful) men and women of all ages seem to respond much better when I mention "cycling", "hiking", or "boxing" than when I all I had was "playing video games", "watching downloaded television", or even "reading". It's kind of hard to untangle the effects of 42 pounds weight loss from any of these experiments, though.
You, sir, are a cruel cruel drug pusher. I cannot let this naked praise for DF go without a warning: you will straight up lose days to this game if you try to figure it out. I lost, literally lost, 96 hours to DF before I wised up and purged it from my hard drive. Even so, its delicious caverns of dirt-to-be-excavated and dwarfs to be managed still tempts me, beckons me back. So far, I've held fast.
Thanks, I actually have a long history with roguelikes and tried to write a 7drl myself once (zengarden. you're a monk, and you tend a garden. occasionally you get stuff through the letter box, has a notion of crafting that I took from df. that's it). While many roguelikes are just tweaks of the hack model, the form itself allows a solo dev to focus on gameplay and build something complete. Hence, the genre has stacks of potential for innovation.
I enjoy social (multiplayer) games. The teamwork and the potential that presents itself for the group of people I'm playing with is usually what holds me, instead of just what the game presents at a basic level.
For example: I mostly play Battlefield 3 right now, and while the graphics are good, and the game plays nicely, the value comes almost entirely from the social experience in the context of the gameplay.
There's virtually no innovation, but I'm not sure that's the reason, I think you just move on. I remember a crossover point where I looked at realistic graphics and thought "I could just go outside and go for a run" and then did.