5 Ways to Tell You're Getting Too Old for Video Games

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popej

First time out of the vault
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-tell-youre-getting-too-old-video-games_p1/

I'm sure some of you have seen this already. Now I'm ageing a bit (30yrs old) and find myself a little less bitter about the apparent over-simplification of the games market, I find articles like this do make some good points.

I don't agree with point #4 at all (longer is better) but there's some definite home truths in his "But the truth is..." rebuttals.

I thought this article would provoke some good discussion here as there a clearly a lot of 'older' gamers on NMA who share my bitterness. Fallout is definitely a centre-point franchise when it comes to the controversy surrounding 'dumbing down' after all (god I hate that phrase).

Please read the whole thing before posting. I'd like to hear what everyone here thinks, regardless of age and whether or not you think Fo1&2 were better/worse than Fo3.

Thanks
 
Yeah well it's true. As you grow, so does your expectations, while games rarely evolve since - gasp - they're made for profit and always have been.
 
s very true in a lot of ways. Although, I'm 23 and I can't see myself getting tired of games soon (maybe it's because I'm a casual player)
 
Well, I'm 23 and I am getting tired of gaming. I mostly play old games on Dosbox, but I don't have much time, anyway.
That's probably it. I don't have enough time to concern myself with loads of games anymore, but I don't like those AAA casual games, either. So I'd rather play old games with more depth, but I rarely finish them nowadays.
 
#3 bugs me a little. It's not that games are any less immersive or compelling because of your age. Instead, the technology has evolved to a point where the room for imagination starts to shrink. You don't need as much imagination to immerse yourself when everything is gorgeously rendered for you.

It's like the difference between reading a book and watching a movie of the book. Frodo Baggins must now always look like Elijah Wood to many modern viewers, or else "someone messed up!"

You don't have to do much to imagine what Shepard would look like in "real life" - the graphics of Mass Effect are at a point where you more or less understand what he would look like. We know what characters sound like. We then end up arguing over who looks most like a set of pixels, rather than what he -could- look like, etc.

Older games like Final Fantasy. Those little pixels leave room for a tremendous amount of imagination. But if you're used to more modern games, looking back on older games, you are less elastic because you don't use that much of your brain when critically thinking about them.
 
DevilTakeMe said:
#3 bugs me a little. It's not that games are any less immersive or compelling because of your age. Instead, the technology has evolved to a point where the room for imagination starts to shrink. You don't need as much imagination to immerse yourself when everything is gorgeously rendered for you.

It's like the difference between reading a book and watching a movie of the book. Frodo Baggins must now always look like Elijah Wood to many modern viewers, or else "someone messed up!"

You don't have to do much to imagine what Shepard would look like in "real life" - the graphics of Mass Effect are at a point where you more or less understand what he would look like. We know what characters sound like. We then end up arguing over who looks most like a set of pixels, rather than what he -could- look like, etc.

Older games like Final Fantasy. Those little pixels leave room for a tremendous amount of imagination. But if you're used to more modern games, looking back on older games, you are less elastic because you don't use that much of your brain when critically thinking about them.
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THIS^

I like games with a realistic look to them (That's one of the reasons I like Fallout) but sometimes games gotta let loose with abstraction.


OT but If you guys like their writing you should tottally buy John Dies at the End. The humor in it is very Male-centric but it's also very scary at the same time
 
It's much more about the games industry changing than older gamers changing. Back in the good old days computer games, like computers themselves, were hard to use and understand. Just look at their origin: the first computer games were designed by hardcore technology nerds -- not the pansy "I go to comic book conventions and think the new Doctor Who is awesome!" quasi-nerds of today, but mathematics and computer science graduate student nerds. Old computer games required inquisitiveness and a focused mind or you couldn't play them, which is why so many old games are considered "unplayable" by the new generation.

Everything today is easy as pie. You install the game and it runs. You put the game in your X-Box and it works (and if it doesn't you get all huffy and pissed off). Gaming is a bigger industry than it's ever been, because it's open to a larger audience than ever, and simply by virtue of the increased numbers, that audience is dumber than any audience that has ever played computer games before. It's been watered down as a consequence of its popularity. People don't want to play games they can't understand, so games have gotten dumber too. More flashy, to appeal to the "shiny object" fascination of a wider, more average audience, and more violent, for the same reason.

In short, I haven't left games -- games have left me. Most of them, anyway.
 
Well the problem is people wanted games to evolve, wanted shinier and more realistic visuals, full voice overs, tense action - now that we have it, turns out some stuff had to be sacrificed. That's the way of things.

It's not like I don't mind simplifing everything, but damn it if I ever want developers to make not working, overly difficult games who just about test your ability to do tedious and unrewarding stuff while breaking all the time. Video games ARE entertainment, after all, I like to play games that don't make me want to throw the monitor out through the window.

Besides, there are still old school games out there, games for smartphones, indies etc. - it's not that you don't have an alternative to AAA titles.

Change is a difficult process and most often people don't get things right - but look at games like the Witcher, DE:Human Revolution, Warhammer 40 000 series made by Relic - some developers do care about quality. I think it's worth to try to make big AAA titles, because at least sometimes we score a jewel that's really worth the effort.
 
Besides, there are still old school games out there, games for smartphones, indies etc. - it's not that you don't have an alternative to AAA titles.
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These games are simple too.

I remember the old Ultima saga ... Ultima 6 and 7 were great.

Those games just do not exist anymore.

Today, games like Assassins Creed dominate the game sector.

And while they are quite good, they are a style of games which I have no interest at all whatsoever.

It does not feel like playing a game - it feels like having an actor in a movie.

But if I want to watch movies, I go buy a DVD and watch that.
 
UniversalWolf said:
Everything today is easy as pie. You install the game and it runs. You put the game in your X-Box and it works (and if it doesn't you get all huffy and pissed off). Gaming is a bigger industry than it's ever been, because it's open to a larger audience than ever, and simply by virtue of the increased numbers,
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So more people enjoying what you like is a bad thing? How so good sir? And how is games that actually work a bad thing?
 
I realized the article was fail when the guy mentioned FFIII (or any FF game) as a piece of stellar writing. Either he was an exceptionally dumb teenager, or is a shoddy writer.
 
That or like a lot of gamers, his folks only got him an SNES with a couple of games and that's what he played when he was younger.

I was lucky that my folks had a computer when I was growing up, so I played both computer and console games.

I will admit that my first computer was a Mac, a PowerMac if I recall correctly, which meant I had to wait a couple of years to play any games.
 
It's a trash article. Ofcourse the games didn't get worse, it's the consumers problem if everything is shit! Truely we live in glorious times!
 
Surf Solar said:
It's a trash article. Ofcourse the games didn't get worse, it's the consumers problem if everything is shit! Truely we live in glorious times!
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I believe he wanted people to put things in perspective, which from what I see on these forums, many people fail to do. He may be using wrong arguments sometimes, but he's got a point.
 
I agreed with the multiplayer bit and most FPS are guilty of this and its sad because I actually like the genre and see that it has potential. HL2 had about 13 hours of gameplay for me, I beat Modern Warfare 2 in 5 hours in one sitting. So I find it bullshit that they can't make them longer or hell have a better story to the lot of them (COD and Bad Company are exceptions, though the former is getting too out there for a "serious game")

But is that a direct result of game developers focusing more on MP as their choice or is it a result of them seeing the a strng MP focus is what the players want?
 
Of course any CoD & Battlefield related game will have a strong focus on Multiplayer... Battlefield was allways focused on Multiplayer and CoD established itself as games with MP Focus after so many players loved the MP..

Even cod 1 ist still played on PC, there are still lots of servers and players.


Dont like the article at all.

I dont hate on long games, i hate shitty games that force me too waste 50 hours on shit i dont want to do i.e. long linear games with unnecessary boundaries.

Also i love Multiplayer in general, i just think that Console Multiplayer and the mp of most new games suck badly.
 
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