THE GAMES INDUSTRY HAS BECOME LIKE THE MUSIC INDUSTRY - AND I FEEL LOST

6/2/2019

I can't keep up with games anymore. I think that if I was still writing Digitiser - as per its original plan to cover the entire breadth of gaming - I'd be lost. Indeed, if we were faced with covering it, just with the two-man - and later three-man - team we originally began with, we'd have no chance.

It's one of the biggest changes I've witnessed over the course of my years writing about games, and the primary reason that Digitiser The Show chose to focus mostly on old games, mainly from the era that I was writing Digitiser for Teletext.

It's not so much about nostalgia as being practical. I can do old games, and talk about them with a degree of confidence that I know what I'm saying. I often worry when I touch on newer stuff - especially the sort of games which come laden with a passionate fanbase - that I'm going to put my foot in it. And by "it" I mean a deep trough of nerd effluence.

Part of the challenge of writing about games these days, and keeping a handle on developments across the industry, is the size of games. I'm not just talking about the literal size of them - the big open worlds of Far Cry and the like - but the way in which the fanbase will build upon them, these communities springing up around the outskirts like shanty towns.

Back in the day, I could be confident of my opinion on something like, say, Sonic & Knuckles after three or four hours of play. I'd get that done, move onto Cannon Fodder, for example, then clock that in a few more hours. Games - and being a games journalist - was manageable.

Now, I don't have a clue about half the things I read, and need to take two weeks off work to review something.

YOU'VE BEEN WARFRAMED
I went to download Warframe for my Switch the other night, then thought I should probably look it up online first, and discovered that the game is utterly bewildering to newcomers, and there are pages upon pages of lore, and rules, and tips online. Apparently, you only really start to "get" the game after tens of hours of play.

Consequently, that put me right off, and I went back to playing New Super Mario Bros. U instead.

I don't have a clue what DOTA 2 is, but apparently that's the game all the e-sports people play. I tried Fortnite and found the whole experience frustrating and dull. I've dabbled in Minecraft, but didn't really get the appeal, so instead went online to marvel at other people's epic creations. Many modern games develop these communities around them - villages springing up around a water source - and they're not always welcoming to outsiders.

By all accounts, the Warframe community is friendly enough - unlike some - but it seems doubtful now that I'm ever going to bother learning their social cues and bylaws.

Nonetheless, there is a part of me which feels I'm missing out. I've written at length about how I've tried to get into Dark Souls, but I've reached a point where I'm accepting that it isn't for me. It's like... I've got friends who really enjoy Muse. The band is often labelled as prog - a genre of music that I loathe as much as I love, admittedly, but one which I'd still class myself a fan of - so I kind of feel like I should like them.

Yet every time I listen to their musicI think they're awful. And that's okay; just because I think Muse are awful it doesn't mean that everyone does.

AN AGE THING?
It'd be easy to dismiss this as an age thing, but it's more broad than that. I reckon I'd have been as lost and overwhelmed by the breadth and diversity of gaming - as it now is - at whatever age I may have been. It seems that there's a fragmentation among the gaming community; once upon a time, everybody would rush out to buy the same big game on the day of release, but now many of us are content to stay within the communities around our chosen games. It's no longer a single collective.

I spent so much time on Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey last year that I never even really got around to playing much else. My copy of whatever the most recent Call of Duty is called still remains in its shrink-wrap.

I feel compelled to make a judgement on whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I lean towards it just being a thing. I mean, when it comes to music there's rarely much crossover between, say, the Ariana Grande fans and the Dream Theatre fans. Yeah, we can all be cool and disparaging about pop music - in the way that many of us look down our noses at Fortnite - but it's still music, and it still has worth, and loads of people love it. Mainly young people, for sure, but they're still people, probably.

I think that's how I choose to look at games now. I'm not worried that I'm missing out on DOTA 2, whatever it might be. It doesn't bother me that I never got around to the latest Monster Hunter or Final Fantasy. Just as I couldn't possibly - or even want to - listen to every album and single that is released in a given year, as gaming has evolved it has become unrealistic to expect any of us to have a forensic knowledge of every dank corner of it.

Fortnite might be the pop music of gaming, but that's okay. There's still room for other genres; prog (The Witcher III), and indie (Undertale), and alt.country (Red Dead Redemption 2), and metal (Dark Souls), and 80s reunion tours (Super Smash Bros.), and... Vangelis (Assassin's Creed Odyssey).

41 Comments

Geebs

6/2/2019 10:08:48 am

I wouldn’t worry about it:

a) Muse are highly competent musicians but only have about three good songs in total. The rest of their stuff consists of them rehashing their one or two compositional tricks over and over again.

b) Warframe is basically unplayable on the Switch; everything’s too small to make out what the heck is going on at any given time, and the frame rate is so low that aiming at things is a chore. Also the actual shooty-bangs aren’t much fun, even on the big screen. Not understanding why people like games that are basically just grind is a positive character trait.

c) nobody is an authority on anything, really, except in genres that are so completely encysted by jargon that they are only of interest to their specific audience anyway. A few people do good long-form investigative stuff but it’s still as much opinion as anything.... and that’s fine! The other 98% of games coverage is uninformed hot takes, incomprehensible yelling, or plagiarism.

Taucher

6/2/2019 10:12:57 am

"It seems that there's a fragmentation among the gaming community..."

When we were young videogaming choice was down to Commodore 64 or Spectrum, SNES or Mega Drive. Nowadays you choose what kind of gamer you want to be.

I am 39, I wouldn't recognise Fortnite if it was married to my daughter. And most of the games that the younger folk like seem deadly dull to me. But that's alright because there is much in gaming for 39 year olds.

When Digitiser was in its heyday it was all across the entirety of videogames but in this new fragmented world, you are niche. The YouTubers live streaming Fortnite are also niche, albeit a huge niche.

Videogames have grown up with us and its great!

Mary Rillion

6/2/2019 10:41:47 am

But imagine someone listening to the first three tracks of [any Marillion album] once, while washing up, then saying 'I couldn't really hear it, but anyway I've done enough now to know it's just not for me.' Agree, would you?

Mr Biffo

6/2/2019 10:54:45 am

What is the point you're making?

6/2/2019 11:05:55 am

Do you think they would have given it a fair shake? Would they have put in the requisite effort to reap the rewards?

Nick

6/2/2019 12:44:28 pm

I remember watching a documentary on the Booker prize a few (maybe ten) years ago. One of the judges was asked about the ethics of not reading the entirety of all the entrants. He responded that if the book hadn’t taken him in the first 100 pages then what was the point. It couldn’t win even if the next 200 pages were excellent, the beginning would still mean it wasn’t worthy.

We aren’t under any obligation to give something a fair shake beyond, perhaps, approaching with an open mind.

Having said that, I did recently buy the Switch version of Dead Souls after giving up a few hours in on the 360. We’ll see how it goes.

Leigh L.

7/2/2019 12:45:02 am

To be fair, depending on which Marillion album it is, you might be half an hour in before you've got past the first three tracks.

Dominic

6/2/2019 11:17:31 am

I often wonder how Jenkins finds the time to do all those reviews on GameCentral

Biscuits

6/2/2019 11:48:35 am

This is a good article that makes many cogent points; namely, there's too many massive games around. Hitman is free on psn this month, and as much as I want to play it, I am unfamiliar with the franchise and worry yet another learning curve would be too much.

I was playing Gwent, the witcher card game, in beta. It was pretty good fun, unbalanced and a bit rigid deck-wise, but fun to put on after work. Then they left the beta and changed everything entirely: massive fundamental changes like removing a 'lane', changing the value and actions of literally every card, introducing loads of new mechanics... it's like a different game. While I don't see anything wrong with that by itself, I just don't have the time to learn another card game

colincidence link

6/2/2019 01:53:43 pm

I heard there was a New port of Gwent

CrispyF

8/2/2019 12:50:49 pm

This is an amazing pun, and I feel it should be elevated on a golden pedestal or something. Genius.

6/2/2019 11:56:13 am

kinda an ever-branching family tree, or an ever-splitting disgusting amoeba!!! If we reduce things and call The Beatles the common ancestors of pop music - seems reasonable to say that all pop music is influenced by them or by someone influenced by them, then gaming's very much done the same. And visual entertainment; there must be like 40 TV channels these days. And celebrity culture. And... politics???????

Culture grows exponentially and, like, music can no longer access absolute zeitgeist moments like when the charts represented the majority public tastes and, uh, everyone was into Nirvana for a bit? That was a thing, right? Seems fair to say gaming has gone that way too.

You know 60s pop culture nostalgia, right? It's got a defined vibe. And 70s, and 80s. And 90s is a thing too. It could be shortsightedness, but it's hard to think of a singular cultural aesthetic that could ever sum up "the 00s" (oo-ies) or "the 10s" (tennis). And that's the mild casualty of culture having so many options now.

blah

Spiney O'Sullivan

6/2/2019 02:30:18 pm

You've hit on something here that I've thought about myself with regard to the GTA series. I think that this fragmentation is exactly why the radio stations of Vice City and San Andreas seem to capture an era while GTAIV and GTAV just kind of feel like a bunch of stuff being played while you drive.

But then maybe I'm just too close to the IV and V eras to really see what will in 20 years be seen as the 00's and 10's definitive sounds.

Omniro

6/2/2019 03:07:08 pm

I've thought about this too, and I agree there is no defining cultural zeitgeist for the past 18 years. We should be able to see it by now if it followed the pattern of the late 20th century. From the perspective of the 90s, it was clear to see what the zeitgeist of the 70s and 80s was. But we can't really distinguish much of a difference between now and the early 2000s, particularly as regards to pop culture.

Johnc

6/2/2019 12:18:20 pm

I had wondered why Digitiser the Show is predominantly retro whereby Digitiser the Website isn't but I didn't want to ask as it'd come across as criticism. So now I know! Thanks!!

Dan Whitehead

6/2/2019 12:23:31 pm

A key difference is the whole idea of "games as service" that is now the norm. Used to be you'd buy a game, you'd play the game, maybe finish it, maybe not, but the game was the game and that was it.

Now, you're basically signing up to a years-long "content map" and investing not just money but also time in sticking with it, getting the new updates, the new DLC, the next in-game event, the time-limited weapons and costumes that say "I was there at the start".

This all results in a severe case of the "sunk cost fallacy", where I suspect a lot of people who are now neck-deep in Warframe, or Destiny, or whatever else, feel compelled to defend it against criticism (usually while moaning about it elsewhere) regardless of whether or not they're still enjoying it, simply because of how much time, effort and money they're poured into it. This in turn ensures that development is forever in thrall to The Community, and so it continues to accumulate a load of gunky dogma regarding HOW TO PLAY and WHAT TO DO and NOT LIKE THAT.

Each game, assuming it survives past its first year with any sort of player base intact, quickly becomes suffocatingly self-absorbed and increasingly impenetrable to newcomers.

7/2/2019 01:38:29 am

notice how, if you play a '90s game now, you have access to the entire original intended experience of the game? And this'll be true in 3019, when archaeologists dig up a Game Boy.
With how more recent products incorporate DLC, online play, tournaments and events, this is no longer the case. Doesn't make 'em a bad thing, just transforms the medium away from the 'archivable piece of art' and toward a 'you literally had to be there'.

Cunzy1 1 link

6/2/2019 01:04:23 pm

I think for gamers of a certain vintage we feel like this because it was possible to know or keep on top of everything about games within our lifetimes.

Gaming news would come from magazines, games were only available from that one shop in town. There were less platforms to play them on and most were firmly things wot played on a telly with a controller.

Now we've got a myriad ways of playing games, online communities, fan art, cosplay, art books, podcasts, twitch streams, remakes, demakes, mods etc.

I'd wager younger gamers are less concerned because they've never been on top of it all. It's just normal to play a game with a 7 in the title and 6 was released before they were born.

I think it comes from being lucky to have been around for the explosion of video games from quirky toys to a hugely diverse and rich culture!

6/2/2019 03:43:51 pm

I miss when keeping on top of gaming news just meant deciding whether to buy the Future or Emap magazine relating to your choice of console or consoles once a month and reading Digitiser in between those...

Col. Asdasd

6/2/2019 08:01:38 pm

This was my initial feeling but I'm beginning to wonder how true it ever was. Certainly there's more games being made now than ever, but reading blogs like The Collection Chamber and watching youtube series like Ross's Game Dungeon (highly recommended) I'm discovering that even when I was most tuned in to the gaming zeitgest, keeping abreast of all the releases through games mags and Digi and just going into shops to have a look (remember that?), there were still platforms and genres saturated with games I didn't hear of then and haven't to this day.

Rather I wonder whether it isn't as much that what we don't play is creeping into our peripheral vision and that causes a mild sense of bewilderment or alienation. I can vouch that Dota 2 is actually great fun, but you need to spend a hundred hours in it before you even really have an idea what's going on. Meanwhile every time someone mentions a VR game I'm reminded that there's an entire frontier of gaming with multiple rival platforms and hundreds of games that I've never even touched.

https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2017-02-26T10:43:00Z&max-results=7&start=91&by-date=false

Spiney O’Sullivan

7/2/2019 01:22:53 am

I’ll admit that I was aware of a slightly-too-cosy sense of nostalgia about that post when I wrote it. As you suggest, perhaps the limited information back then meant it was simply easier to *feel* on top of gaming news that to actually *be* on top of it.

7/2/2019 01:27:27 pm

Absolutely yes bit of a Basement King syndrome!

I don't think it was ever possible but I certainty felt like it. Also the 'community' was so much smaller, whereas now there's thousands of communities for each gaming related aspect or kink.

Reversible Sedgewick

6/2/2019 02:06:39 pm

Muse can go shove it. Just from radio play I remember them releasing the track "Muscle Museum" three different times in an attempt to make it happen. That's a cardinal sin in my book. Just accept that no one wants to buy your song!

Also, "Plug in Baby" is just "Sexy Boy" by Air played twice as fast on guitars. Which in theory sounds like it could be amazing. And it should be amazing. But then the whiney man starts singing over the top of it like the auditory equivalent of Viz's Temperance Spoon. Ruined.

6/2/2019 02:29:16 pm

I have made three attempts to get into Warframe, each time under the assumption (based on impressions that I'd heard) that it was a great game. I just can't get into it and I don't really see what's so special about it. It's the most grindy game I've ever played and I find it bizarre that people are so fanatical about it.

The stopping point for me was this: I progressed my character to a certain point, at which time you're supposed to do this specific mission to get some reward that's vital to your character's progress. But the mission was impossible to complete alone, and there was never anyone else available to run it with. I hung around for ages waiting for other players to join, and I think maybe one person turned up for a few minutes.

Meatballs-me-branch-me-do

6/2/2019 03:15:23 pm

I likewise find I don't have enough time to keep up with this. There are too many games and they all require a far greater investment of time, so far as I can tell, vs the likes of Sonic & Knuckles or Jungle Strike or whatever.

Also, as you said in the EA article yesterday, I find it hard to let go (thanks in no small part to the sunk time fallacy) and so I am determined to keep playing ongoing online games while also trying to get through/into new and exciting ones. My daughter is due in a few months which I am sure is going to finally force my hand on a few of these.

In terms of the whole closed communities, this is very true as well. I've noticed a great many insist on TeamSpeak or some other voice chat (even if 90% of the time it's used for chit chat, racist chitchat, heavy breathing, and screaming 12 year olds who are angry you didn't play exactly the way they wanted you to). I don't do voice chat with randoms, which pretty much excludes me.

Tangent 2: the missus was talking to another dad at work who says he lost interest in games because he felt he spent time with nothing to show for it, and once he got good at them, he got bored. She said that I play a lot of simulators (I do) which is both fantasy fulfillment and something that is challenging to get good at and requires maintaining that skill to get anyway.

Which leads back in a way to the closed communities. For sims they tend to be older men/cranks/curmudgeons who are very particular about their hobby and likewise are intolerant of any deviation from the way they think things should be done. I basically had the equivalent of someone shoving me out of the way and shouting "no, no, let me show you how to do it properly".

It feels, I guess, like we have segmented so much with our very particular tastes and never have to leave our comfort zones. The whole world (not just the games and music biz) is like this, as you can see with the shouty gammon echo chambers on social media.

Bruce Flagpole

6/2/2019 04:22:29 pm

My issue with big modern games is not so much that there's too many of them, but the way they've become such a large commitment, and pretty much don't want you to play other games.
It's like you're no longer picking what to play for the next few days, but a lifestyle choice for the forseeable future. It's games as a cult.

Floop

6/2/2019 05:08:07 pm

I bought tom clancys the division on day 1, it took me about 700 hours to realise it really isn't that much fun

Mike

6/2/2019 06:51:38 pm

There’s always been games that large swathes of people will never get. I for one have never understood the massive appeal of football management games. They are barely even video games having all the fun of a complex Excel spreadsheet. However, I know plenty of people are totally addicted and whose sole reason for buying new consoles is to play the latest version, which to my mind hasn’t really progressed much since Kevin Tom invented the genre on the humble speccy.

Adam Villarreal

6/2/2019 06:53:04 pm

I think it's a good thing that the community is fragmented to the degree you've described. While there is comradery in knowing that me and a buddy are in line with our copies of Kingdom Hearts in hand, standing in line with someone buying Anthem could present an opportunity to talk shop about different genres; maybe even try a game I never would have considered before.

While I do agree gamers can get awfully territorial when it comes to their favorite game or franchise, More often than not, I think gamers are just happy to find fellow people they can talk about their favorite hobby with.

6/2/2019 06:58:57 pm

The Ariana Grande / Fortnite comparison is interesting to me because it highlights one thing that I think is very positive about games that are popular among the kids these days and that is that Fortnite seems to be a very high skill ceiling afair that requires effort to get good at.

I dont mean to say that Ariana Grande makes minimum effort type of music, she is clearly talented, but the themes are fairly simple to get and meant to appeal to a common denominator (at leastI think). On the other hand DOTA is an extemely complex thing, requiring skill, cooperation etc. Minecraft for crying out loud, a game completely tied to creativity and making sometimes very complex stuff. Warframe also sounds comparably complex.

I'm rambling a bit and not sure if my point is clear (I am an awful writer of anything) but its nice to see impenetrable things rather than dumbed down things be popular even if I dont personaly get them.

B3tan_Tyronne

6/2/2019 07:46:12 pm

For myself as a 46yr old gamer, it simply boils down to how much time I can commit to gaming wither it be playing or looking into gaming news. I do not have any children which I knew can put a good many gamers habits on hiatus but for myself I do not have the free time I had in the 80's and early 90's.
At the moment my gaming time is presently 50/50 playing something and watching youtube channels talking about either upcoming games or gaming news in general. Multiple gaming websites for me simply no longer hold any interest as the majority of their woke reporting and politicially/social brainwashing entagled posts are inceasingly doing nothing for me as I play games to escape the reality of life, I do want to have to contend with it in my gaming as well.
I also come from an age where a game has a start - middle and end and then you move on to something else and the games as service model which will become the majority of gaming very soon is great for investors but not for gaming. I want a story, I want a journey and I want a great ending (which games STILL to this day suck at - how hard can it be to do a decent ending?) - games a service are just the start of the game with no story to it at all and ends up a vacuous and soulless experience as you have to make up your own stories which is a great shame.

/rambling over

Dr. Budd Buttocks, MD

6/2/2019 08:04:56 pm

I've become considerably more ruthless with the time I devote to games now. If it hasn't grabbed me within an hour or so, it's bye bye. When I had more free time, and it didn't seem like such a guilt trip to fritter it away gaming, I used to grudgingly slog through games I wasn't enjoying just so I didn't feel I had missed anything by abandoning it too soon. Not any more. I tried the Anthem demo at the weekend. Bored the tits off me and it was uninstalled after about 30 mins.

6/2/2019 08:15:44 pm

The other thing I'd like to add is that there ARE still games which you can play (and even finish) in under ten hours, and thanks to the creativity, dedication and diversity of the thousands of people making them.

Here are a few games I've finished in the last month I can recommend

Brothers - short, mechanically inventive, story driven, beautiful world
Witchway - incredibly cute puzzle adventure game, self-contained, doesn't outstay its welcome (currently $2 on itch.io)
Oxenfree - adventure thriller, beautiful art, story driven, emphasis on exploration over puzzles, interesting dialogue system
Pony Island - weird, unique, one of those games that's better played without knowing anything about

I finished each of these in a couple of evening's max. None of them felt too short or poor value for money (there's always a sale, somewhere). Getting through a game that fast feels like a life hack.

Does anyone else have any short games they'd care to recommend?

6/2/2019 09:11:17 pm

Journey
Katamari Damacy
Naissancee

Scanner Sombre is the absolute mutt’s nuts in VR, right up until the crap ending. Not sure it would be anywhere near as good in 2D, admittedly.

Penyrolewen

6/2/2019 09:49:41 pm

I reckon it’s a combination of things. Like lots of you, I’m an older gamer (48) and find things different now from back in the olden days.

Some of it is just having less time. Kids, wife, job, house etc. all take up time that was once gloriously unsullied by responsibility.

Some of it is the amount of content. Using the music analogy, a modern open world map mopper is the equivalent of a 12 double album rock opera - difficult to get into, impossible to know it all well.

Some of it is that we (I) just own more and are less willing to put the time in. Back in the day, I only owned a (relative) few albums and games and each purchase was carefully considered. They represented a significant investment of money and weren’t bought lightly. I didn’t give up on an album until it’d had at least 20 listens, thus giving time for the “growers” (often the best records and those I still listen to) to do that thing upon me. Now, I can listen to anything for free and it’s rare that stuff that doesn’t grab me straight away gets more than a couple of goes. Not quite the same for games but again, I’d give them a good go before discarding them. They are now cheaper (in real terms) than they were and I have a)more money and b) a much bigger library of games to fall back on if I don’t like a new one.

So I don’t put in the time I did. My kids do though (given the chance) for much the same reasons - availabilty of time, money and other options. So it’s sort of about being older but sort of not. For me anyway.

James Walker

7/2/2019 12:02:54 am

I pretty much felt similarly when I got my Xbox360. I had it for about 6 months when I realised I couldn’t be arsed with it all anymore. It all seemed like such a ball ache. Didn’t have the time or patience anymore and went back to occasional blasts of SF2, Pac-Man or the odd driving game.

DEAN

7/2/2019 09:54:25 am

I like Muse.

Not saying I love them and want to make Muse babies or anything but yeah, they're pretty darn tootin' but I wouldn't have said they were a prog band.

My favourite bands right now are Suede and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - old I know but....

Last really great new game I enjoyed that wasn't made by Nintendo was Q.U.B.E. 2 - loved it and would have definitely at least tried to make some Q.U.B.E. 2 babies.

Jon link

7/2/2019 05:48:50 pm

I think the vast amount of effort required to get into some games is what puts me off. I think Rocket League is brilliant but I am not going to spend 10 hours practising aerial leaps.

Even when I became non-rubbish, I go out quite a fair bit and I realised I hadn't touched the game in a week. There are just a lot more interesting things to do as an adult than a kid when i had no transport, no money, and a very small friend network.

Pete Davison link

11/2/2019 02:51:57 pm

I've been thinking about this for a while, and honestly I think it's a good thing. It means that there's something for everyone. The thing that people forget -- and sometimes get unnecessarily pissy about -- is the fact that, by extension, this means that not *everything* is for everyone.

That's a good thing, though. It means that, as you say, things can develop their own fanbases and subcultures in the case of never-ending, ongoing, community-based games like Warframe, Fortnite and Minecraft. It means that developers can feel comfortable and confident making a game with a laser-sharp focus on its target audience rather than fighting the losing battle that is making something "universally appealing". And it means that creators of all sizes, whether multimillion dollar corporations or tiny little bedroom devs, can all thrive under the right circumstances.

In fact, it's the big multimillion dollar corporations who seem to "get" what gaming has become the least. They're still designed-by-committee games with designs on "broad, universal appeal" -- through necessity, mainly, because if you spend that much on development, you need as many people as possible to buy your damn game!

Make a cool JRPG on the cheap, on the other hand, and the people who like JRPGs and anime are going to buy it and enjoy it, and the game will make money even if it doesn't sell millions.

Having grown up in the era you describe, where everyone bought all the same "big releases" at the same time as one another, it's a bit of an adjustment in thinking -- but when you look back at just how many games came out on the 2600, the NES, the SNES, the Mega Drive... it's actually not all that different a situation in terms of raw numbers. The main difference is that the advances we've made in technology allows for much greater variation in aesthetic style as well as gameplay style, making those target audiences more distinct and clear than ever before.

I'm all for it, with one caveat: enjoy what you enjoy, but don't be a dick towards people who enjoy things that don't do anything for you personally. Words I try and live by these days!

Lost Sock

12/2/2019 08:40:19 am

I'm completely the same as many folks in the comments, I just don't have the time or inclination to get into some games now.

Everytime a new one comes out that everyone plays online, whether it's Fortnite, Warframe, Rainbow six siege, I always to try to give them a go before passing judgement or, declaring they're not for me. It never takes me long to realise they're all huge time sinks, and to be anywhere near good at them or get enjoyment you basically have to be monogamous with the game.

Looking at my PS4 profile, I have 282 games, I know I own more than that just haven't installed them yet, and of that 282 I've probably fully finished about 20. So there's 262 games in some stage of completion, many not even being played for an hour as I've started them to have a looksee with the intention of going back later, just never did.

I'm 40 now, and I realised a good 5-6 years ago that I'd passed a point I could get into games that require huge effort, I never got into Minecraft when that blew up, it never interested me and still to this day doesn't, then Fortnite came along, I actually played that long before it really took off and had about 10 games or so. I don't nor ever will understand the fascination with that game, to me it's full and insipid with naught but kids bouncing around to avoid being shot but, it's hugely popular regardless and despite being just a 3rd person shooter, it's immensely grindy and/or time sapping. I have no idea what the seasons are or what they do but I get the impression some gamers play that game exclusively, and that's just not for me.

At the moment I'm juggling Modern warfare remastered, Portal knights, Prey, Spyro 2/3 and Shenmue 2, with games of Pes 2019 and Onrush inbetween when I've only got 15 mins or so to pass. I just can't imagine ever getting into a game that requires me to play *just* that game for hour upon hour for potentially years.

I played some cracking games last year, and my top 3 sent into GC was Celeste, Astrobot and Moss. All 3 are quite short, and I think that's where I'll be in gaming from now on, games I can pick up and finish within a weekend, with the occasional long winded one thrown in if it interests me enough. Of a few games I can think of coming out soon, there's a few I won't touch with a bargepole covered in snot, The Division 2 and Anthem spring instantly to mind, 100+ lootbox infested, perpetually upgrading grindathons that I wouldn't play/download if they were free, never mind £60.

I fear there's too many of these kind of games now, and not enough gamers to cover each of them and forge communities, and that'll spell the end of some developers sadly, especially when some of the best examples are absolutely free. I don't know how anyone has the time for a game like Destiny, I can't imagine sinking 100s and 100s of hours into one game, I can barely sink 10 into some games before I'm bored and have to move on or take a break and go back - The Last of us is a prime example, it took me 2 years and countless restarts to finish that game, and I still maintain it's massively overrated as it never once compelled me to keep on playing, it was a chore from start to finish which possibly explains how it took 2 years to finish.

I'm definitely in the same camp as Biffo, most of the new stuff that's crammed with lore, stats, skins, endless events etc will pass me by and I'll stick to shorter, less complicated and less demanding games to continue enjoying my hobby. I can't wait for Shenmue 3, and I've just finished and loved Rese 2 remake - those are the kind of games for this old fart, the kids can keep the Apex (I've forgot its full name), Division 2s and Anthems.

Lummox60N

12/2/2019 04:16:59 pm

Hello? Am I too late to chime in?
Just want to offer my 100% agreement.

The childrens, they're all playing Fortnight. I've tried it. I don't understand it. Fair enough, have a deathmatch, they're GOOD, we LIKES that, we can UNDERSTAND that. But why the construction? To what end?
I've tried Warframe, too. I enjoyed the tutorial. I loved the premise. And then the game itself kinda feels like it's spunked all that potential away in a brazen cash-extortion machine..."Hey, wanna spend some money?" how about, "Nope"?

You know what I wanna do? I wanna pay some money and play a game. An entire game. I don't even want the option to pay money to improve it. I wanna to have to get good by effort. If I wanna play against a mouthy teenager I want to be SURE he's sitting within arm's reach so I can physically smack the mannerless little cunt when he spouts profanity.

I'm old.

THE GAMES INDUSTRY HAS BECOME LIKE THE MUSIC INDUSTRY - AND I FEEL LOST

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