I’ve been “gaming” since dad brought home the Atari 2600 back in the 70s.
Games have gotten so much better and deeper over the years.
#1 reason I can’t be considered a gamer anymore: time.
I just don’t have the time to invest in it. Being almost 40 with a house and family means anytime I’m not at work I’m running errands, house projects/maintenance, family activities, sleeping, exercise. I can hardly keep up with the current crop of movies I want to see.
I may have to wait till I’m retired, kid is grown up, live in a condo before I can get back into it.
I haven’t owned or played a video game console system since the Atari 2600. I’ve owned a couple games on my personal computer since then (chess, Risk, Lemmings, some thing with a guy who dug through somethimg or other), but haven’t really played those since college.
I like video games. The ones I like I enjoy a lot. But I know I’m the type of personality who can just piss hours and hours and hours away playing video games. And unlike a good book or movie or TV show, I don’t feel I have really gotten anything out of the experience, even with a good video game. It just feels like I’ve wasted hours of time (and hours can flow by effortlessly for me playing).
It’s also something I can’t do with my wife. She’s not interested, and my time at home is typically devoted to doing things with her. I may go to movies by myself, or watch TV shows she doesn’t like while I’m getting ready in the morning, but when we have free time together, I want to do things with her, and gaming is not remotely interesting to her.
The other thing, of course, is price and aptitude. I’ve never played Nintendo. Never played X-Box. Never played Wii or Sega or any of the other myriad varieties of games out there. When I won a contest that yielded a free Portable Playstation (one of those handhelds ones), I bought a few games and had fun for a while, but (a) either the shoot-em games were simply beyond my ability with all the multi-tasking of buttons and modes and whatnot, or (b) I’d get hooked on a fun little premise and notice 5 fruitless hours had passed. Now it’s just buried in my closet. And keeping up to date with all the new consoles and games and such just adds on expenses–money that I’d be more comfortable spending elsewhere.
I guess I’m an old school joystick kinda guy, so the learning curve for modern games is pretty high. And if I want to feel challenged and waste time all at once, a Soduku book only costs $4.
I appreciate the talent and artistry involved in the games, and I’m genuinely amazed at how sophisticated they are, but they go so far beyond what I’m used to that I just don’t find them that interesting to me, and since I don’t know or associate with any other passionate gamers, it’s not something I feel is missing from my life (other than not getting the occasional pop culture Halo/Myst reference).
Nitpick : maquis either means a band of resistants, or their hiding place. The word originally described the vegetation in the southern hillsides, rocky+shrubland. Since those regions weren’t suited for agriculture or settling towns, the hills of Provence and Corsica were a haven for smugglers for a long time - nobody but goat and shepherders went up there. “Prendre le maquis” came to mean something akin to Scottish outlaws going for the hills, i.e. abandonning one’s regular life to go and hide from the authorities for a time.
A single member of a given *maquis *would be a maquisard (pronounced mah-kee-zarr).
See, I told you video games made you dumber. 
I’ll just throw in my current frustration: big worlds instead of well-crafted ones.
I’m currently playing Fallout 3, having played both 1 and 2, and while it is actually a pretty good game, a lot of it just seems half-assed. Like, for instance, the loot - I don’t know if it’s just randomly generating loot, or what, but for the most part, it’s either really repetitive, or doesn’t make any sense, or both. I mean, there have to be tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of containers, so it’s not like I expect them to be individually hand-picked, but it does kinda throw you to find bags of yeast inside the long-sealed Chinese bunker or whatever. I’d much prefer having less stuff lying around, if it made more sense, or was more unique.
I’m fascinated by this thread; Mostly by the people who assert that they like games but are frustrated by them in some fashion. Almost universally, I find that these people are playing the wrong games. There are… a LOT of games out there, ranging from the virtually impossible to fail to the brutally difficult, from the incredibly simple to the monumentally complicated.
I think a lot more people would enjoy games if it were easier for them to find the games they would enjoy.
That said, I don’t think there’s much that can be done if you don’t find games rewarding. Though I’m puzzled by the need for “rewarding” in entertainment, since I generally don’t feel “rewarded” by a book or a movie either.
I’m mainly into CRPGs, and a couple of strategy series (Civ and HOMM).
Someone up-thread said “RPGs may be too hard”; one of my frustrations with more recent games is that they’re too easy - puzzle- and plot-wise, that is. What I mean is, back in the “good 'ol days”, say in Ultima, or The Bard’s Tale, or Might & Magic, you had to figure out puzzles for yourself. Or perhaps you’d need a certain item to advance the plot, but that item is found on the other side of the world. Many times I’d come across some strange item, have no idea what it is for, but think “I’d better hang on to this.”
These days, it seems this is no longer the case. If an item is needed, it’s always within easy reach, or if a puzzle needs to be solved, the answer is provided on a silver platter.
An example: in Baldur’s Gate II (which is an awesome game, don’t get me wrong), in order to kill trolls, it’s necessary to use fire or acid. There’s a keep that has been overrun by trolls, and every barrel and crate in the place is chock full of acid and fire arrows. I’ve always thought this is incredibly dumb. Whatever happened to the old Boy Scout motto?
CRPGs have definitely been trending in the easy direction. If you go back to Phantasy Star 2, surviving a dungeon was a grueling experience that would test your planning, your strategy, your resources and yes, your luck. You’d probably need to try more than once as you could take a wrong turn and just go through too much MP/too many items/etc and need to retreat to recover and resupply. And even if you did everything perfectly, you might not have the levels to beat the dungeon without throwing yourself at it a few times. That’s LONG gone in the modern era, where it seems like doing any sort of “optional content” at all will make you automatically overlevelled for the plot. (I’m playing Mana Khemia 2 now, and I’m actually getting frustrated because enemies don’t LIVE LONG ENOUGH for me to charge up and use the cool super attacks.) And you’re pretty much expected to waltz through the dungeon on the first try, because heaven forfend that the Dark Tower of Deadly Evil be dangerous enough to keep the party away from the plot for a few more minutes.
I hear this complaint a lot and I have always wondered what the mindset for this is. I enjoy books and movies, but I consider their enjoyment also fleeting. Why do you only feel that applies to games?
Those things sound nice until you do them sometimes. I agree, CRPGs games have gotten easier, but it was mainly due to complaints like the one above that made programmers lower the bar on newer releases. Personally, I chalk it up to the fact that people just like to complain and are never satisfied with what they have
I’m not saying I’m in a hurry to go back to the “wow, this is hard” of early Phantasy Star games, but OCCASIONALLY feeling like I had to work for something would be nice. Most games these days, I can sometimes get the feeling of having to push myself until I realize I’m carrying a HUGE BAG of disposal items that I’ve never actually needed to use that could completely revive my party like 6 times over.
There has to be some sort of middle ground between “advance through this dungeon by repeatedly pressing X” and “throw yourself at it a dozen times or so until you have the levels to beat it.” Anyway, I was mostly just adding support to the point that GESancMan made - that RPGs are definitely not hard these days.
With regard to the “I don’t feel like I’ve gotten anything out of it” complaint… it might be that it’s much easier to “lose” 4-5 hours in a video game, whereas if you sit down with a film, you’re not signing up for more than 2, most of the time, and you know exactly how long it’ll be. I suspect a lot people feel bad for spending more time than they think they “should” on a game, even though they’re actually enjoying it, which is why they keep playing.
I’m 43 and I just never picked up the habit. Arcade games of my childhood just seemed pretty dull to me (I do like pinball), and I never knew anybody who had any kind of videogame system. (My sister had Pong at some point – again, not compelling.) I don’t really much like card games and board games, either, although since I became a parent I’ve lost more closely played matches of Candyland and Chutes and Ladders than I care to admit.
I love the Beatles, but I see the commercials for their Rock Band and it compels me about as much as, say, a curling video.
So I just had a thought; A question for those who feel like they’ve wasted their time when they play video games… do you watch sports?
I think there are a lot of similarities between people who eagerly follow the exploits of their favorite sports team (note: I’m not talking about people who actually PLAY sports here. I’m talking about consumers of broadcast entertainment) and people who eagerly await the next release in their favorite game franchise.
Thoughts?
Whilst I originally loved the idea of ‘open worlds’ in RPGs, with Morrowind being the best example, I find that more often than not it seems the developers considered it a chore to actually fill it. I couldn’t pass a cave or ruin in Morrowind without exploring it. In Oblivion I couldn’t give a damn. A recent game (Risen) had a much smaller world compared to some games but it was hand-crafted and overflowing with interesting places.
Games with mission-hubs aren’t fooling me any more either. They give you multiple choices about which mission to take because they can’t be arsed to write a well-constructed, interesting story with well paced gameplay (Wolfenstein).
I hate omniscient enemies that can see me from a mile away and shoot with unerring accuracy (Farcry 2).
I really hate timed events in strategy games. I don’t mean the ‘survive for 30 minutes’ type of event. I mean the ‘destroy the structure within 20 minutes or lose’ events. I am an unapologetic turtler. I like to build up a strong, impenetrable defence in my main base before I even think about attacking (I still expand quickly to secondary bases). There is nothing more glorious than an enemy army being annihilated by my towers or foolishly walking in to a carefully constructed killing field. Timed missions are the only times I might consider skipping a mission.
I hate cheating AI. Often it’s a patch for a poor AI and it detracts from the strategy. If I rob an enemy of a resource I want it to feel the pain, I don’t want them to get a steady stream of free resources just because the difficulty is turned up.
Quick time events. Don’t like them. Never will.
In the Final Fantasy games I really hated the parts where you were forced to form two separate parties. I have favourite characters, I don’t want to waste hours levelling up uninteresting characters just to get through a short section of the game. It was annoying in FF7, it was annoying in FF8, it was annoying in FF9.
I hate the terrible UI on some console ports. At a bare minimum; how hard can it really be to change the main menu to something less of an eyesore? It’s annoying to be play games in 1920x1200 resolution when it looks like the interface is in 720×576.
The so-called FedEX quests: Would you kindly deliver this to a guy on the other side of town for a 10gp reward? No.
On to MMORPGs. I don’t like it when developers change the game just because lots of people whine. Let me give an example: Ultima Online was originally a harsh game. Players could kill other players and the only safe places were the towns. This helped foster a community where players protected each other. It stimulated the economy because it wasn’t safe to ‘farm’ and items needed replacing constantly. There was a strong sense of risk versus reward. Some players whined and they added safe zones which only damaged the community to appease solo players. People started to farm and the economy nose-dived. In EVE Online there are always players complaining that they can be killed even in secure space. They want the game changed so they cannot be attacked, even though that goes against the whole point of the game as stated by the developers.
I’m sure there are more but I’d like to stop posting and start playing now .
I think, speaking for myself, it’s because there is no real sense of closure. A book, movie, etc. has a narrative arc that usually culminates in something…cathartic, I guess. Video games don’t do that (well, not unless you invest tons of hours completing every level or what have you), so when I stop, it’s an arbitrary stopgap and not any true resolution. I could keep going and going and going, but I’m choosing to stop there. So it might feel cool to finally figure out a puzzle or route or strategy to complete a round, but it doesn’t hold the same dramatic heft of a good story well told (at least for me). I guess you could say the same thing about some episodic television, but it still feels like it has more structure and incremental payoffs than anything I’ve experienced with video games.
Sure, I guess a mediocre movie or pedestrian book can be just as fleeting–but a masterpiece, a true work of art can resonate with me for decades. I still remember with crystal clarity when I first saw Lost Horizon or 2001 or read Catch-22 or Absalom Absalom! But I’ve never had a videogame experience stay with me on anything more than the most superficial level. I guess the problem is that video games, from what I’ve experienced, evoke very few emotions–tension, elation, stress, laughter, rage. Fun stuff, but the same thing is true of rollercoasters, and I don’t consider a thrill ride an art form. I know there are much more sophisticated games out there, but nothing I’ve played has had (or, from all appearances, could have) anything other then a one-dimensional effect on me.
Which of course means–maybe I’m just not playing the right ones. But for the most part, I don’t have the time, resources, or inclination to invest in playing the games that allegedly do come closer to fitting this model. So all I have to go off of is personal experience, and there’s something fundamentally unsatisfying about video games for me. It’s like eating a CostCo size bag of Cheetos by myself. I can do it and even enjoy it in the moment, but in retrospect, there’s a tinge (or more) of regret that I devoted my energy to something that in hindsight wasn’t completely worth the time. YMMV, of course, but that’s how it plays out with me.
This still sounds funny to me. Surely you don’t read books in a single sitting? Then when you put them down, for whatever reason, it’s an “arbitrary stopgap and not any true resolution.”
Also, it sounds like you are one of those folks who is playing the wrong sort of game. If you need stories to feel closure with your entertainment, then you should probably avoid games with “rounds”.
Whoo! My theory holds! (Though I hated Catch 22, and was not moved to any emotion except “Thank god I finally finished” so YMMV)
I game, but I don’t play FPSes because I find them claustrophobic. A 45-degree field of view and no ability to turn your head gives me anxiety for some reason, even if there’s nothing shooting at me. Also, I’m not very coordinated.
You oughta play some Shin Megami Tensei games. Nocturne in particular is especially deadly. The random encounters in later dungeons can and WILL kill you. Often in very, very cheap ways. All are invulnerable to one, two, four, or all but one kind of damage. Some bosses won’t give you a single chance to win if you haven’t got the right party setup, or the right skill to hurt them. It’s a brutal game - but when you finally beat Matador for the first time, GOD the exhiliration ! 
Nocturne is STILL six years old at this point. It’s not remotely what I’d call a “recent game”. Sure, it’s not SEGA Genesis old, but it’s not new. I did play some Digital Devil Saga on the PS2, which is a little more recent, and while it was challenging, it wasn’t challenging in an interesting way.
Persona games, on the flipside, aren’t really very difficult at all. Though they do occasionally require effort.
And that matters why ? It still looks good 'nuff, and besides I still play X-COM. So there.
OK, so you have a point. I’m sure I’ll get one of mine someday and then you’ll be sorry, mister.
I’m of two minds about the DDS games. On the one hand, the story is interesting enough, and the skill/levelling mechanics are much better than those of Nocturne, or at least more forgiving. You can’t screw yourself so bad, you can really tailor your team as you like it without having to go bonkers with the minutiae of demon fusion, and thank god the game over on protagonist death is over.
OTOH, the dungeons are boring as hell, feel really half-assed and to top it off, you have to go through them multiple times. Because plowing through half an hour of lvl5 monsters to get to the lvl 75 portion of the first dungeon is oodles of fun.
Yup. I’m playing Persona 4 right now, and I’ve been meaning to start over on the hardest difficulty since I’m plowing through dungeons right now, but I’ve already spent so much time on my current game…
Among 30somethings I know, there seems to be a break among gamers based on how old one was when the NES came out. Then again, my dad played mine quite a lot back then, and still plays PS2 I think, so maybe that’s bullshit.
As far as frustration goes… I remember playing NES as a kid and sometimes getting so pissed I wanted to snap that damn paddle in two grrrr! (I think it was Master Blaster.) I’m OK now if I take my pills…
Since the N64, I’ve only played PC games. Keymapping is usually the first thing a game can do to offend me. There is no reason whatsoever that I should not be able to map any command in the game to any key on the keyboard. WoW is the gold standard there. Empire:Total War is complete shit. Speaking of ETW, unfinished releases or bad ports from console to PC are pretty frustrating.
I play all kinds of games, about half and half multiplayer vs single player lately. I’m good at some, and I realllllly suck at others (COD multiplayer as others have mentioned, TF2 as well) but I still have a lot of fun playing. I laugh my ass off the whole way through rounds where I’ve got a 1:3 kill:death ratio (up to 1:1 at best!). I have fun without a care for the competition others are having. I love racing online, but that’s about as competitive as I get.
I played WoW for about 3 years. It had it’s ups and downs, but I still enjoyed it until the end. I wouldn’t say it frustrated me so much as got boring. The frustrating parts were mostly social things that probably exist in any group or team hobby. Obnoxious individuals, min-maxing, keeping score, srs bsns.