When Dragon Age Inquisition came out I was so excited. I bought it on release day and installed it (yeah, PC gamer here) but ended up playing it only for a couple of hours. This past Month, Mass Effect Andromeda came out, bought it and same result.
These are two of my favorite game franchises and they didn’t hold my interest. I have an idea what some of the reasons are: one is time. I can’t sink an entire weekend into playing a game like I used to years ago. The other is my eye site isn’t what it used to be which I think is effecting my enjoyment somewhat.
Or maybe I just do’t like games anymore? I still play some. I have played the hell out of a bunch of Telltale games in the last couple of years. I also play Magic on my PC quite a bit. But years ago I played RPGs, RTSs some shooters and tons of Sim type games.
I still buy them. I have a ton of Steam games I bought with full intention to play but end up never playing or only playing for a few hours. Maybe I just have to admit I don’t like PC games as much as I used to. Anyone else have this problem?
I have come to the same conclusion. I have been playing computer games for30 years. And I have started to realize that I am just not that much into it anymore. Even a game I really like rarely holds my attention for more than 10 hours or so. For a while I blamed it that games just aren’t that good anymore, but that’s BS, the best games now are the best games ever, because the new tech allows it. I’ve just changed, and burned out on the medium, at least for a while now.
My taste in games as definitely changed. Way back when, I enjoyed first person shooters like Doom. These days, games like that have too much “realistic” gore in them for my taste and I also don’t enjoy the stress that they need for fast reaction times. I’ve moved on to turn based strategy games or point and click adventures. Those kinds of game you can interrupt without losing, or play in small time periods, which I need these days as I’m also a busy adult.
There are a few exceptions, like I enjoyed the hell out of Radiation Island and want them to do a sequel.
It comes and goes for me. Lately I’ve been spending more time noodling over D&D character sheets then playing video games but I still play. It’s nice to have games that are packaged into definite rounds so I can play one or two rounds of Battlefield 1 or do a single dive in Darkest Dungeon and feel like I had a complete experience rather than sitting down with Civ VI for an indeterminate period.
Console gamers also have to install games now a days. Brave new world
Well, to be fair, both games were significant downgrades from the previous titles.
Dragon age inquisition eschewed the previous titles significant investment in compelling, involved, multi-faceted side quests for large, boring, open world areas filled with MMO style fetch quests and enemies to pound the “A” button at.
Meantime, Mass Effect: Andromeda went for an innovative approach to user interfaces: the fuck you, you’ll scroll through ten tiny lists and hit 5 different keys to get what what you want and you’ll like it approach. Added, yet again, a bunch of large and boring open areas with little substance to them and decided to cut costs by hiring 12 year olds to write the game’s brilliant dialogue. Some examples:
“Lol, I think that guy doesn’t like me much. Probably because I shot him in the face trollololo”.
“Is your dad dead?”
-> insert broken, semy smiling response from character.
“Well you’re not good enough to replace him. Oh sorry, my face is tired. But I can’t just take you seriously as a replacement for you father. Oh sorry again, I’m being poetic, I was thinking about poetry so I said something that was poetic, just then.”
-> insert player scratching head.
They also dropped narrative agency hard, turning the game into the typical, AAA game where you’re just watching cutscenes and moving through the motions with little or no way to affect the outcome.
I can also definitely see time issues being a problem. These games are big. As to your eyesight, cna’t you go to the doc to help with that?
If you like Dragon Age Origins, maybe try a game that’s a lot more like that - how about Pillars of Eternity?
Overall I’m in a similar boat as you. Less time to play games (more work, a 3 year old), and a continued disappointment in large budget games and the directions they tend to take.
I’m finding myself more and more playing smaller budget games, and shorter experiences. The main exceptions are strategy titles like Total war, Stellaris, Civ, and big RPG’s, but not the AAA treadmill kind, but stuff like like Pillars of Eternity, Divinity Original sin and Tyranny. The latest Might and Magic, MMX, was a real nostalgia treat too.
I can’t tell you whether you’ve changed or not, but this statement here is utter nonsense. Improving tech does not, in fact, necessarily improve games. In fact, it makes them HARDER to make good because there are so many things that can go wrong.
Sometimes, new tech allows for a new form of gameplay, and thus you can get a great game that simply wasn’t possible before (like back in the 1980s, when online access led to the first MMO games). More often, though, new tech just allows for prettier graphics. And while, all else being equal, prettier graphics is better, all else isn’t equal, and you can’t make a bad game good just by prettying it up.
I’m in the same boat. I actually spend more time watching OTHER people play games on Twitch than I spend playing. I think I value the entertainment more than I value the experiences I get from gaming. I don’t want to say I’ve “done it all”, but a lot of the titles these days are rehashed versions of stuff that has come before. Interest has waned to almost nothing.
It’s not from lack of free time either as an adult. If anything, I have more. Comfortable job that lets me work from home, no kids, double income. Almost no real day-to-day responsibilities right now besides yard work and other random chores. I just don’t get the same rush.
I think you might have misunderstood him somewhat.
He said the best games now beat the best games of back in the day because the technology is better–not that every game coming out these days is necessarily better. Additionally, UI/UX have drastically improved in modern games. Old games typically had clunky interfaces even with everything else being great.
But, as you said, it’s harder to pull off. I still think the original Wasteland is one of the best games ever made. But the combat/interface/skill system is lousy by today’s standards.
Old games vs new games is a bit like comparing onions to garlic.
Kinthalis hit this, too, but my initial reaction was mostly… the AAA versions of each of those genres only superficially resemble the AAA examples of each of them from 5-10 years ago. It’s entirely possible that changes that the mass market approves of just don’t work for you (e.g. the difference in emphasis from the first game to the most recent game in the Dragon Age or Mass Effect series). In particular, if you’re not a huge fan of open-world and third-person, most of the ‘improvements’ that have been made in RPGs and shooters will be a net loss for you, and RTSs in the 10-20 years ago sense only barely exist anymore.
For what it’s worth, my gaming time has changed more than gone down. I play a ton of indie stuff now, and there’s a lot more second screen gaming (with my laptop open while my wife watches something on the DVR that I don’t love). Something like Persona 5 can come out and I can still get completely obsessed with it, but that’s much less common. It’s more effort to find the best games for me than it was ten years ago, because there’s so much more out there and because I’m not interested in most of the top selling games. But that’s where all the YouTube and Twitch stuff comes in, too.
Like many of you, I’ve played computer and console games since the eighties. And, like many of you, I rarely find a “I must buy this” game any more. My Steam spending has definitely gone way down in the past couple of years.
What I have learned about the New Me is that I tend to enjoy and stick with games that have a creative or problem-solving element (but not purely puzzles; I solve puzzles at work all day). Games like Rimworld, or games that are very free-form open-world, like Fallout or 7 Days to Die. In other words, games that give me a lot of freedom to play the way I want.
Either that, or games that are quick and easy to pick-up and put back down, like Borderlands or, on the browser/mobile side, Animation Throwdown, where I’m only playing 10-30 minutes at a time.
Call of Duty? Battlefield? I used to love the genre, but none have been as enjoyable for me as the first couple of Ghost Recon games: it let you direct your squads, and you could take as long as you wanted, from as many directions as you wanted, to meet the objective.
I downloaded the new Doom demo and played it for about 90 minutes. I’m an old Doom/Heretic fan from back in the day, and used to create Doom maps. And I will hop on the bandwagon and say the new Doom is impressive and well-done…but I just don’t care for that kind of game any more. It’s not the game, it’s me.
I too have been struggling to enjoy gaming for the last year or so. Like the OP I still buy games but some of the magic is gone. I don’t lack for the free time to play, I just find myself opting to do something else than play games.
I still like video games and I want to regain the joy I had for them. That said I am not totally out of it yet.
The last game to really have me hooked was “The Witcher 3”. Funnily enough I have just started a second play-through. I played it to completion when it first came out but have not gone back and played the expansions. I decided I wanted to try it again with all the bells and whistles.
Interestingly it took me maybe 8-10 hours before I became really hooked again (got a few levels, have a lot of quests, getting some better equipment and so on). I found the same to be true of “Dragon Age Inquisition”. While it was overall not superb I think I liked it more than most. I am a sucker for eye candy and it looked good. When I got my castle I was enjoying myself.
I will also say I just upgraded my PC to a 1080Ti and a new, very nice 1440p monitor. I can play “Witcher 3” with all the goodies pushed to 11 and it looks amazing (also smooth as can be…not a single hiccup). Finding all my games can now be run at max settings with no fuss is pretty great and helping to revitalize my interest (at least for now).
I think one of the problems with PC gaming is the horrible effect that the likes of EA and Ubisoft are having on the industry. They are PC game manufacturing factories that aim to squeeze every last dollar out of you while minimizing costs and reducing games to tick boxes of features.
We see this most recently with “Mass Effect: Andromeda”. I too am a HUGE fan of the series and was terribly disappointed in this one (I did not buy it but played the first ten hours). The problem is while this latest one says it is made by BioWare it really isn’t. BioWare was bought by EA and I do not think there is one person on the team that made ME:A that made the original series. EA sees an easy cash grab, goes cheap on things like writers and voice actors and churns out a game people will buy because they love the series. EA missed that people loved the series for the story and acting and not because it has multiplayer.
Worse, if any good new developers appear with a great new game EA will buy them up and like a vampire suck the life from them. So far I am glad CD Projekt Red (who made the Witcher series) has not succumbed and they are producing great stuff and really cool to their gamers.
There is still good stuff out there. Maybe revisit some oldies you have gathering dust in your library. I started playing Homeworld again and it is still great. Most of the Batman games hold up well. Civilization never gets old. Plenty to choose from.
I’ve noticed I am much more selective with what games I play. I only have so much time (being in graduate school and having a kid ruins video game time) and so if a game takes too much time to learn I’m probably not going to play it. Also twitch shooters are off the table. I don’t want to actually have to practice a game to be somewhat decent. The only multiplayer I play regularly is Heroes of the Storm (I played since it was released so didn’t have a huge meta to learn), with Titanfall 2 a distant second.
I think one of the problems for games like ME Andromeda (and ME3 before it) is that it is now either expected or required to put in a multiplayer option. So if you’re like me, with no interest in the multiplayer, it seems like time wasted in development that takes away from the campaign.
I just don’t have the time any more, or really the desire.
Case in point: I was really, really excited by the new Elite. That was a game that I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing on my Commodore 64, way back when. I needed a new desktop anyway, so got one with a decent graphics card, a nice Hotas joystick setup, downloaded the game and…and, it turned out I just can’t be arsed. It’s great just flying about in the training setup, but I really can’t be bothered with the grind of the real game.
I do still love Civ though - it’s easy to dip in and out of that - and I’m enjoying getting used to the changes in Civ VI. I do still find myself returning to Civ IV though - heavily modded, not much peril, just tinkering away making a nice society for my people.
I have significantly reduced the amount of playtime over the years, despite now having almost unlimited time to play (I retired at the end of last school year). I ascribe it to two issues:
Nothing is truly new any more. By this I mean that, while graphics and UI, etc. improve, there’s nothing being simulated or created that’s substantially different from what’s already existed. When I started gaming (ignoring the PONG excitement, I’ve gamed since the late-70s), EVERYTHING anyone did as a game was new. Eagerly I’d await some new idea or concept. When I bought a new game, it was almost certainly because it was about something interesting that I’d not ever seen modeled before, or was modeling something I HAD seen before, but in a unique way (think Mario Kart, which is just a car racing game, really). I sunk endless hours into games solely because they were doing something NEW. The first dungeon crawler I played I played endlessly for a while. TRACON, a game about air traffic control. SimEarth, SimCity, etc. Myst. Tetris. Battlefront 1941. Age of Empires. Civ. Europa Universalis. The Sims. Everquest. Baldur’s Gate. Railroad Tycoon. Roller Coaster Tycoon. etc. etc. etc.
In the last few years, however, I’ve seen precious few games that actually tackle something that I’ve not seen modeled already. So the newness of games themselves is gone. That means that, unless I want to be wowed by graphics, or by some user interface aspect that’s new (motion sensors, virtual reality, etc.), the game itself won’t have any newness factor. I saw the graphics for the new Mario Kart, and I couldn’t care less whether I play it or not; it’s just Mario Kart looking better.
So all I do now is play newer iterations of my most favorite older games. Civ. Europa. FM. Not a heck of a lot else. Sometimes I go back and play old games for nostalgic reasons. I’d much rather play the original MoO2 than the current MoO, with all its updated graphics. Takes me back to when the games were FUN.
