Feeling alienated by modern games

[Ayen]

Either from the fact that the gaming industry is an ever changing beast, or a product of growing up, but lately I've felt really alienated towards most games in the last couple of years. Forgive me as I begin to sound like your grandpa.

Back in the day it just felt like you had a truck load of games to choose from between Nintendo, Sega and PlayStation. Atari was still around but I never had an Atari system sadly. Then there was the arcade that would have games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, X-Men, Gauntlet Legends (does anyone remember Gauntlet Legends?), Mortal Kombat, etc. etc. Back then the genres that was really popular were platformers and RPGs. We also had a lot of good action, adventure, action-adventure, fighting and survivor horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. And stealth games like Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu. FPS games were more rare back then and most of the ones I played qualified more as rail shooters where you just went from point to point and shot things that appeared on the screen.

I'm not knocking current games. I was just blown away by Darksiders fairly recently and that qualifies as a current gen game. There just isn't a lot on the market that appeals to me anymore or leaps out at me like the next big thing. Exclusives don't stand out like they used to with the exception of Nintendo, but Nintendo has always had better known exclusives than the other platforms. And I couldn't care less about some of the recent stuff that are used in games now. Online? I don't play games to play online. I'm anti-social as all hell on the occasion I play an MMO. I'd rather play a traditional single-player or mulitplayer game. Thus the feeling of alienation. Has anyone else ever felt this way or am I on my own?

tl;dr: I'm old. Time to retire.

[Aulayna]

This is something I can relate too actually.

I'm not sure if it's just due to getting old or not but I find very few titles these days entice me. It may also be nostalgia too as when I was young I'd only really ever get a new game around Christmas or my Birthday, or occasionally Easter, so there was always that big wait in anticipation.

Nowadays I can pretty much just buy anything, and now I have that choice I find that most titles don't really hook me anymore. But then I look back at the past 9 years and realised that most of my game time from those 9 years was spent on things like World of Warcraft, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2, The Secret World League of Legends and now A Realm Reborn (with servings of Pokémon on the side). What little time wasn't, was usually lost to Left 4 Dead. MMOs make you chase a carrot on a stick, and most of the time I keep chasing it...

Even a fantastic game like The Last of Us I found didn't hold my attention for longer than a couple of hours at a time. Heck I think the only single player games I lost any significant amount of time too were Mass Effect 1-3 and Skyrim and all the Ezio Assassin's Creed games. Borderlands 2 as well, but that was mostly played Co-Op.

I do look at a lot of the recent releases trying to find something, but there's nothing that screams out to me anymore. I guess it's harder to find a title in a market that's now saturated with yearly Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, EA Sports games etc.

But working 40-50 hours a week my free time is also at a premium too so I guess I've become a lot more fussier about what I can devote my time too.

[Pike]

I'm older than a lot of you guys (turning 30 in a couple of months) so I actually have a bit of a different perspective. I felt this way maybe seven or eight years ago. It felt like a lot of the magic in the gaming industry was gone and my interest in it waned quite a bit. I still played games, of course, but it was mostly tried and true older titles that I knew I could appreciate. (Well, that and Halo.) Both college and work gobbling up the bulk of my free time didn't exactly help.

Fortunately enough for me, much of the magic has returned now that I'm older and out of college. I work a lot, yes, but outside of that I do... nothing. So I play games. Old games, new games, doesn't matter. I play them and love them. I actually credit Steam a lot here with their Steam sales and giving me millions of titles from every direction to try. I'm happier with gaming now than I've been in years.

TLDR: It might get better, because it did for me!

[Loony BoB]

I've never got tired of gaming. The only real difference is that I tend to play single games for long periods of time, while back in the day I would play a lot of games in short bursts. I think it is often a case of just not finding the right game for a while, or losing the energy for other reasons.

[Elskidor]

I' stuck old school. I really have no clue what to even try that is new that I might get into. I tried Skyrim a couple years back and it didn't do anything for me, so I'm wondering if I out grew the industry. Heck, I didn't even like FFXIII much, so I've held off on trying it's sequel, but I guess I should before it's next sequel comes out. I keep hearing stuff about the Last of Us so I may try it out.

[Del Murder]

There's more games out there I want to play than I'm able to play so I'm good. Not having as much time to play is a big contributor to that.

[Quindiana Jones]

I feel that the gaming in my life is being alienated by other parts of my life. I already play more often than I should, but I still wish I could play more.

Poor gamer me.

[Bolivar]

I'm partially jaded myself, I don't think gaming has that same magic it did in my adolescence but I'm sure part of that is just not being a kid anymore.

But look: there's more games being made today than ever before, and they're certainly not held by the measure of Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty. Maybe it's time you tried something new? You talk about the variety on Nintendo, Sega, and Sony back in the day, but I assure you that's nothing compared to the variety right now across handheld, Console, and pc.

You might also want to look into the classics you missed. No matter how many games you played, there's probably a lot on any given platform that you should give a shot. Nintendo's eShop and the Playstation Store both provide cheap and convenient ways to go back to legacy titles and they have sales all the time. Steam, GOG and Amazon's digital game service all provide the same function for pc. I know your frustration's with newer games but people don't limit themselves to new titles when reading or watching film and neither should you.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I've been getting into a lot of the old NES/SNES/Genesis classics lately just for the fun of it. For me, the games are just simpler and leave a lot to the imagination, and I also feel like it puts me back into a mindset of when life was a lot simpler. Playing older games (up to the PS1 era) is sort of an act of escapism for me so I can destress.

That being said, the only real downside of current gaming for me is a lack of good JRPGs. That will always be my favorite genre, and there just doesn't seem to be as much as there used to, at least on home consoles. I know handhelds are a different story. I probably game as much as I did as a kid, but I spend most of my time playing older titles I missed or more modern games in shorter bursts.

[Mirage]

I'm not having the problems outlined in the first post at all. I find myself having plenty of single player games that I feel are worth my time. I have a moderately sized backlog of games I haven't played yet because I don't have enough time, and an even bigger backlog of games that I want to complete "everything" in, but don't have time for. Most of these games are from the PS360 generation, althought some are remnants from PS2.

[Spuuky]

Different genres/styles are currently emphasized in AAA gaming than in the SNES era or whatever, which means I don't like most of them. But there are so many games produced that there are still plenty I do love.

[Ayen]

I'm partially jaded myself, I don't think gaming has that same magic it did in my adolescence but I'm sure part of that is just not being a kid anymore.

But look: there's more games being made today than ever before, and they're certainly not held by the measure of Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty. Maybe it's time you tried something new? You talk about the variety on Nintendo, Sega, and Sony back in the day, but I assure you that's nothing compared to the variety right now across handheld, Console, and pc.

You might also want to look into the classics you missed. No matter how many games you played, there's probably a lot on any given platform that you should give a shot. Nintendo's eShop and the Playstation Store both provide cheap and convenient ways to go back to legacy titles and they have sales all the time. Steam, GOG and Amazon's digital game service all provide the same function for pc. I know your frustration's with newer games but people don't limit themselves to new titles when reading or watching film and neither should you.

Good point. I still haven't gotten around to playing Final Fantasy IV yet.

[Pete for President]

"Hold-your-hand-games" alienate me for sure, and those have become so numerous lately. Indies and Dark Souls 2 are the only games I'm currently interested in.

[Ayen]

I'm starting to develop a love for the indies as well. Spelunky and Game Dev Tycoon was the most fun I had playing games this year. I'll probably start looking more into those in the future.

[Mirage]

I don't really see any problems with games that hold your hand for a bit in the beginning. I'm not sure which games you guys are talking about, but most games I play stop holding my hand after not very long. The majority (probably 95% or more) of the time I spend on my games are not handheld, even if they did do that in the beginning.