"Dear Video Games, It's Not You; It's Me." (How have YOU changed when it comes to gaming?)

I have absolutely changed as a gamer over time. No doubt about it. None, whatsoever.

This goes beyond just aging reflexes, though that's a factor also. How, what and the type of games I favor (goodbye platformers and hello strategy games!) have all absolutely evolved with time.

My biggest change:

When Given Free Time to Do Whatever I Want... I Still Only Game for a Bit:
When I would game in high school and college, I would play marathon sessions of my favorite games. Half the day or more could disappear. Today? A marathon gaming session for me consists of two hours, at most. I simply do not find sitting and playing one game for longer than that actually enjoyable. Even when I find a game that I absolutely love I have to take a break and do something else.

What about YOU? How have you changed as a gamer over time?

I became less multiplayer focused and enjoyed being a lonely miser in my single player pursuits. I've also found it increasingly hard to go back to older games which are new to me, despite my sense of appreciation for them increasing.

Like OP, I am also cutting my gaming sessions down to an hour or two per game at a time. I can't marathon anymore. Usually if I marathon, it has to be a back to back smattering or 3-4 different games, spending a little time in each.

I play my handheld stuff a lot less than I used to - saving it for nearly when I'm exclusively away from home. Which means that my backlog there is ever-growing.

damnablebear wrote:

I became less multiplayer focused and enjoyed being a lonely miser in my single player pursuits. I've also found it increasingly hard to go back to older games which are new to me, despite my sense of appreciation for them increasing.

Related to this, I went from regularly gaming online with strangers to now nearly only playing multiplayer games with a small group of friends. Since we are all about the same age and for the most part polite and sane, that's a much more enjoyable experience and more my speed.

It's honestly to the point that if a game doesn't allow robust options for private matches, I'm simply not going to bother playing it. I'm looking at you Titanfall.

I'm in my mid 40's ish going on 25 and I still love them and can marathon for a pretty long while. I can't pull all nighters anymore but if I have the time free, I can easily do 5 or 6 hours.

My question for you, are you a console gamer or PC gamer? Do you game in your home office or on the couch, or both? I find that as I get older, physical comfort has become more important

RooksGambit wrote:

My question for you, are you a console gamer or PC gamer? Do you game in your home office or on the couch, or both? I find that as I get older, physical comfort has become more important

Also in my 40s and the answer is... both. I play games of all types and across all form factors. PC, consoles, handhelds with the minds of family and loved ones, etc.

BUT YES! I definitely have gone from enjoying playing PC games at my desk to very strongly preferring the couch gaming experience.

Easy Mode. I have come to appreciate and love Easy Mode. I have like, 2 hours max every other night about to play. I simply don't have time to go through a section several times. I don't get anything out of that kind of repetition in most games.

I do play a lot of multiplayer games though, and even then, I'm ok with non-competitive games. Except Titanfall. I rock that Rank Chip like a master.

I've shifted the other way, towards PC, but I also think I need a new couch. So maybe I don't count.

As far as multiplayer goes, I will agree that with friends can still be fun. That's the case where I'll specifically make an exception. Because I know what I'm getting into rather than winging it.

I'd say the shorter gaming sessions, even when I have what feels like unlimited time, is also something I see. Gone are the nights when I realize I need to hit the bed because I hear birds chirping outside.

And as primarily a sports gamer, I've begun realizing that the stress of wanting a pure sim experience was kind of ruining what should have been fun games. I'm much more open to taking the games as they are, in the same way I did when playing card and dice baseball games as a kid. Sports games are always about an approximation, and an attempt to mimic the same strategies that are used to balance risk/reward in real life sports. Trying to simulate the part of sports that real life players, coaches , and GMs would love to get rid of has the potential to add elements to games that are just not fun. So I'm enjoying sports games more than at any time in my life.

maverickz wrote:

Easy Mode. I have come to appreciate and love Easy Mode. I have like, 2 hours max every other night about to play. I simply don't have time to go through a section several times. I don't get anything out of that kind of repetition in most games.

Every new comment makes me think you guys are in my head (don't explore the section labeled 'Internet proclivities').

My name is JakePlane and I wholeheartedly endorse maverickz' message.
Young me = hard or normal
Me today = easy by default

I find this is especially true for any Bioware game.

maverickz wrote:

Easy Mode. I have come to appreciate and love Easy Mode. I have like, 2 hours max every other night about to play. I simply don't have time to go through a section several times. I don't get anything out of that kind of repetition in most games.

And this! My wife kind of opened my eyes to this in a way. she plays all of the Batman games on easy, and watches me play them on higher difficulties. At some point, I real sized that what I want out of the game is just to feel like a badass, and beating games on higher difficulties really doesn't do that if I am dying over and over in order to beat a section. So far action games, I have no problem going to easy settings.

The only problem is that in both shooters and sports games, it leaves me fairly unprepared in online matches. One of the things I like about EA's Ultimate team modes is that it is kind of designed to let you find your level and compete against people with similar skills.

JakePlane wrote:
maverickz wrote:

Easy Mode. I have come to appreciate and love Easy Mode. I have like, 2 hours max every other night about to play. I simply don't have time to go through a section several times. I don't get anything out of that kind of repetition in most games.

Every new comment makes me think you guys are in my head (don't explore the section labeled 'Internet proclivities').

My name is JakePlane and I wholeheartedly endorse maverickz' message.
Young me = hard or normal
Me today = easy by default

I find this is especially true for any Bioware game.

I played the majority of Fallout New Vegas on god mode. That might be a bit far, I usually don't go that far, but I had an awesome time. Because all I wanted to do was explore the wasteland.

Indie games and other left-field aberrations.

While I'm not easily offended, I do recognize a lot of the problem areas in gaming (see the Tropes thread, Feminist Frequency, Gamer Gate, etc etc). While I'm perfectly fine with the paradox of enjoying problematic games (Arkham Knight for a recent example), I do find myself increasingly bored with AAA games and all the tropes that they seem to embrace with abandon. The past year or so I've found myself really really enjoying the smaller more artsy-fartsy and just off-the-wall games:

Hohokum
Murasaki Baby
Super Exploding Zoo
Ether One
Brothers
Outlast
Fez
Valiant Hearts
MonsterBag
Gravity Rush
The Swapper
Counterspy
Unfinished Swan

I'm surprised I haven't changed too much in how I play; but with somewhat less time and a lot more options, I'm much pickier now. I'll still marathon games when I get a chance, I'll still default to "normal" difficulty most of the time... I'll just put a lot more care into which titles I do it with.

I suppose tastes in story have changed a lot, though. Playing a teenage boy who saves the world, or watching females run around in impractical outfits, is much less endearing to adult me. As a fan of JRPGs among other game styles, this definitely makes me reject a lot more titles out of hand.

Good topic.

I have cut my gaming down significantly over the last 3 or 4 years; from nightly to pretty much weekends only. On work nights, I need to eat, watch the news and then sleep.

As a result, I too feel no shame at dialling down to Easy when available/necessary. (On this topic, please can more Devs include the option to change difficulty on the fly like the CD Project Red?)

I’ve drifted away from multiplayer too. A combination of deteriorating reflexes, frustration with a culture that treats every FPS and every FPS mode as death match, and boredom with the repetitive nature of most FPSs.

Since the demise of the PSP, handheld gaming is dead to me. (Though, to be fair, it’s been dead to Sony for the past two years.)

Finally, bargain bin diving has become a big thing for me. Unless it’s a GTA or a Souls game, it’s unlikely to find its way into my collection until at least 9 months after release.

My tolerance for repeating things has been greatly reduced over time. When I play a game now, I want to have a "new" experience from it. I'm much less likely to buy a game which seems similar to others I've played.

I feel like listening to podcasts tells me everything I really need to know about most AAA games. Such games can usually be described as "this is like game X, only with Y elements from game Z" which... well, now that I've played so many games in my life, is basically enough information for me to completely fill in the blanks. TL;DP

I still gravitate towards plot-heavy indie games and complex system interaction games. Stuff like Gone Home, and upcoming games like Tacoma or Firewatch, are now very much up my alley. This is partly because video game narrative has historically been rather abysmal, and I enjoy games that try to do a bit more with it.

I like system-heavy games because I still enjoy "solving" them. Although I may be less likely to continue playing such games for long stretches once I figure them out.

There's one more odd quirk: even though my tolerance of games that seem like other games has dropped, I can be completely engrossed by "different" games that involve a lot of repetition. Euro Truck Simulator 2 is the primary example of this; it's completely mundane, but there's really nothing else quite like it, which is why I've spent hundreds of hours playing it.

I have less patience for BS in my games.

For example, unskippable cutscenes. F that noise. Force me to sit through enough of these (unless they're so good and I only have to watch them once, that I don't even discover that they're unskippable) and I'm done with a game.

Forced grinding. Look, I like grinding. I love the Dragon Quest games, and those are freaking grindfests. But the difference is that the core gameplay itself being built around the grind - and thus that being the fun point of the game (combat and exploration in DQ for example) doesn't bother me. But when you make the grind as a thinly veiled obstacle to get to the fun part, then I lose interest very rapidly. For example, Elite: Dangerous, I don't mind having to earn a little money to get the ship I want to fly in, but the entire point of that game for me is the desire to explore for exploration's sake. And to get the ship I want to best explore with requires far more grinding than I wish to endure - that's doing busywork to get to the fun part. Gran Turismo 6 came dangerously close to this too, but fortunately it rewards you with some nice freebies and they patched it to make it a little more forgiving on income if you play regularly.

BS difficulty. I enjoy difficulty that's entirely skill-based like the Dark Souls games where it's all about learning how the systems work and developing the skills as a player to overcome those challenges. I don't enjoy games that simply make things more difficult through arbitrary means, such as jacking up enemy hitpoints/damage and nerfing the player, or making infinitely respawning enemies in "tactical" first person shooters, and so on. So for games where the real draw is the story experience or the fun of being a superhero-type, yeah... count me in on the Easy Mode train too. I did this for Uncharted, Tomb Raider reboot, The Last of Us (though that one I later replayed in Normal mode because I enjoyed it so damn much), and others I'm blanking on at the moment.

Fan service in jrpg's. Ugh. I love the genre, but damn, some of them are embarassingly juvenile to the point where I just can't play them. (yes, I know this is a problem in many games, but since that's one of my favorite genres, I run into it more there than elsewhere)

Forced grouping in mmo's. I love mmo's. I love grouping. I don't love being bottlenecked to halt progress in an mmo without the assistance of a group. Even way back in the days of old-school Everquest (my first mmo, yes), you could progress without a group, but it was very suboptimal. I still spent most of my time in groups and loved it, but on those days when I just couldn't seem to find a group, I could at least continue to progress on my own, albeit slowly. Some modern mmo's unfortunately make the mistake of thinking that the solution to bringing back those heady days of more frequent group play is to lock core content and/or player progression behind mandated group experiences. That's a great way to kill a game for me.

Obviously, I've changed. I'm older, I have a full-time job and two kids. I don't do multiplayer (TF2) like I used to. I still play GW2, but PvE has more tolerance for those "gotta drop what you're doing" moments. I'm more inclined to drop games rather than power through them. I'm more aware of tropes and problematic elements. I'll revert to the "easy" difficulty setting without a second thought if necessary.

Yup, I've definitely changed. Gone are the days in which I'd trudge for hours along the Bitter Coast on Vvardenfell, taking notes, and making spreadsheets about skills and trainers.

Less and less gaming in general, more and more of that is multiplayer shooters, and the most surprising thing was that, after a period of spending a lot of time with consoles, I just couldn't go back to the PC.

At this point, I guess games are to me what cards/dominoes/chess/etc. were to earlier generations.

Interesting. I'm anti-GWJer on difficulty. When I was much younger, I used to play on easier settings. Never was much of an accomplishment freak. I simply don't have a lot of that gene that tells me that other people's opinions are important. Some people think I'd be more successful if I just cared a bit more. Point of a game was to have fun, so I do it easy. Still do. The difference is, I'm apparently better now than before, so I ramp up pretty fast. Started ME on Normal, quickly switched to Veteran, then Hardcore. None of it was for "challenge" - I upped it to Hardcore because it was annoying me that my Warp Combos and ammo powers were basically pointless, not because I wanted a "challenge." When I switched over each time, it was still pretty easy for me.

I'll point out that later playthroughs of people who had MP experience in ME3 found the exact same thing - ME2's Hardcore mode turns out to be pretty damned easy if you know what the system is all about.

I tend to gravitate a lot more toward easily-digestible AAA action games than I used to. While I still love the occasional sprawling RPG epic with 38 classes, 14 playable races, and 30,000 hours of challenging turn-based dungeon crawling gameplay, I honestly don't have the mental energy that I used to devote to those types of games. Give me a Techland game and a craft beer and I'm happy.

detroit20 wrote:

Good topic.

Finally, bargain bin diving has become a big thing for me. Unless it’s a GTA or a Souls game, it’s unlikely to find its way into my collection until at least 9 months after release.

Thank you!

Bargain been diving has also become a thing for me. Inherent in this is another change --- the recognition that I no longer need to be a part of the immediate gaming conversation. it's now the exception to the rule that I will buy a game new and for full price. It's now the exception to the rule that I will buy a game new and for full price. I would rather have a backlog of games

I think I'm the opposite to you guys. Although I'm still in my 20s, I've recently noticed that I'm more into playing games on hard mode because there is a challenge there for me. I've become a bit sick of just going through the motions of a game. Story heavy games I'll often play on normal, but for most games now I really want to have a challenge.

Clusks wrote:

I think I'm the opposite to you guys. Although I'm still in my 20s, I've recently noticed that I'm more into playing games on hard mode because there is a challenge there for me. I've become a bit sick of just going through the motions of a game. Story heavy games I'll often play on normal, but for most games now I really want to have a challenge.

I also really enjoy challenge in video games and this often means playing on the most difficult settings.

This goes back to my interest in systems heavy games; a lot of games have interesting systems that are only really important at the higher difficulty levels. Part of why I gave up on the Witcher 2 is that I found it too hard on the hardest difficulty setting, but I refused to let myself wuss out and drop down to a lower one

Playing on low difficulty settings can gloss over what makes game systems unique, and this can contribute to that "same-y" feel that bums me out so much.

I used to love RTS games. Can't stand them now. Whether the micro involved has gone way up and my ability to concentrate has gone way down or they all just kind of feel the same (I suspect it is mostly the former and some of the latter) but that whole genre is pretty dead to me. I (stupidly) bought Offworld Trading Company in the last Steam Sale and just cannot muster the gumption to start it.

I cannot pop into an RPG, play for an hour and pop out like I used to. Not sure why. I have to set aside multiple hours to play. I still love them but setting aside time to play is difficult.

I don't mind a challenge but I do mind banging my head against a wall for multiple hours. I don't have time nor patience to master a set of skills for a game, especially a game that relies on my declining twitch skills - I need "good enough". I usually play on normal and feel no shame at all in setting the difficulty down if needed. I used to think this was "wussing out" but now I see that this is (for me) a flawed way of thinking. I play to be entertained not frustrated. If I want frustration, real life has more than enough of that.

I think I'd like a longer game, like another Baldur's Gate II, or a more intense game like another Battlefield... 2... But I have those and I never play them. These days I just want to squish stuff, possibly with a large robot. I miss Ace Combat. That was my kind of game, with my kind of music. Oh well. There's always the OST.

I've gone through stages since starting gaming. I really dived in quite late and without being on the internet or reading gaming magazines I just used to bargain bin dive and buy whatever looked fun. In my late 20s I started to 'get involved with the conversation' and started buying newer games willy nilly, often to my regret as I'd buy into the hype and be disappointed. I'm now virtually bargain bin diving more now, and only buying one or two brand new games every year.

I'm playing more indies, but that's thanks to the newfangled delivery mechanisms that weren't available a decade or more ago. The same one that bring me my bargain bin buys.

I've gone both ways with difficulty. Shooters and the like I usually play on easier settings than I used to. I'm generally happy to be a tourist. But I've discovered some games really are more fun on harder settings, Mass Effect 2 is one of those, as are the Witcher games. Harder settings force you to use every tool in your toolbox rather than just holding the mouse button until the enemy is dead. But, I will not hesitate to turn down in the face of frustration where before I would beat my head against the wall until walking away permanently.

Well, between Indie bundles and frequent Steam sales a lot of us older members no longer NEED to game the same way we used to. I grew up in the 80's and 90's when you got one game a year and it usually wasn't even any good. Also it cost $100 and completely dominated the house's one communal point of news and entertainment.

Which, to be fair, also kind of sucked back then.

Someone help me hitch my pants higher!

gore wrote:
Clusks wrote:

I think I'm the opposite to you guys. Although I'm still in my 20s, I've recently noticed that I'm more into playing games on hard mode because there is a challenge there for me. I've become a bit sick of just going through the motions of a game. Story heavy games I'll often play on normal, but for most games now I really want to have a challenge.

I also really enjoy challenge in video games and this often means playing on the most difficult settings.

This goes back to my interest in systems heavy games; a lot of games have interesting systems that are only really important at the higher difficulty levels. Part of why I gave up on the Witcher 2 is that I found it too hard on the hardest difficulty setting, but I refused to let myself wuss out and drop down to a lower one

Playing on low difficulty settings can gloss over what makes game systems unique, and this can contribute to that "same-y" feel that bums me out so much.

That's a great way to describe the appeal of difficult games. I'm into video games because I love to interact with the mechanics of the game. Dying repeatedly in a single level doesn't bother me because I'm not playing to uncover the next plot point or even to beat the game. I just want to mess with the fun mechanics. Difficult games force you to learn and master the mechanics of the game and that's what I find fun.

With that said, as I've been getting older and have less time to play games I'm drawn more towards those mechanically difficult games. I find I get more out of an hour of playing a challenging shmup than a lengthy RPG. In the amount of time it takes to settle my second city in Civilization V I've already made two or three 1cc runs in Ikaruga. Of course, as you can tell from my avatar I do still enjoy story heavy games, but usually I'm seeking a challenge.

Another thing.

I went from playing ALL kinds of games to really focusing in on what I like most. When I was younger, all games seemed to be created equal. If it was a video game, I wanted to play it and chances were high that I would enjoy it. Now? I very much focus on the genres that I like the most.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Well, between Indie bundles and frequent Steam sales a lot of us older members no longer NEED to game the same way we used to. I grew up in the 80's and 90's when you got one game a year and it usually wasn't even any good. Also it cost $100 and completely dominated the house's one communal point of news and entertainment.

Which, to be fair, also kind of sucked back then.

Someone help me hitch my pants higher!

Largely, this.

I used to bounce around between the handful of console games that were in the rotation. Now I bounce around between the hundred or so Steam games that are in the rotation.

Personally I have found over the past year that I put a lot more time into gaming on my Vita than any other device. Although I have a PS3 and laptop to play games on (and have no shortage of games on either of them), I find so much easier to simply flick on my Vita and play something while lying in bed.