how have your gaming habits changed?
DiscoZombie
Join Date: 2003-08-05 Member: 18951Members
Join Date: 2003-08-05 Member: 18951Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">as you've gotten older...</div>when I was younger, you could sit me down in front of almost any game, no matter how hard or frustrating, and I'd play it for hours. even insane, nonsensical games like ET for the Atari kept me playing. Now, it takes a really awesome game to keep me interested, and I lose patience with a game much quicker. These days, I would never have the patience for grinding xp in the early Dragon Warrior games, or the difficulty of, like, Adventure Island and other early Nintendo games... I can barely bring myself to finish the highest quality games that come out these days...
It's hard to say what exactly changed me. I guess when I was a kid, there were fewer games out there and I could afford fewer, so I had to be happy with what I had... and now there's more games out there than anyone could possibly play, and now that there's reviews all over the internet, it's easy to become way too picky...
how have your gaming habits changed over the years, and why?
It's hard to say what exactly changed me. I guess when I was a kid, there were fewer games out there and I could afford fewer, so I had to be happy with what I had... and now there's more games out there than anyone could possibly play, and now that there's reviews all over the internet, it's easy to become way too picky...
how have your gaming habits changed over the years, and why?
Comments
Also, I rarely have long periods of time to game so I tend to quickly bore of single player games. I hardly ever buy a game for Single Player. I got Oblivion, and really enjoyed it, but I didn't get even near to finishing it.
At the moment I have NS, WOW and PVK2 installed.
Still own a grand total of 0 consoles. So, thats the sum of my gaming experience. Also, for a few days a buddy of mine and i had a <a href="http://www.progressquest.com/" target="_blank">Progress quest</a> challenge going on. but that only lasted a short time.
Oh, and Progress Quest doesn't count as a game. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
I find myself getting harder and harder to please, it just seems like fewer and fewer games are worth playing. Or maybe the games are just getting worse, that might also be a possibility.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Me, too. I play and I play and I play and I play but I rarely ever play for more than maybe an hour. I just wonder if I outgrew games.
Since then I've noticed that I have little tolerance for stupid grinds (read: levelling in RPGs) but hard or frustrating stuff still gets ploughed down by my usual sheer tenacity and stubborness (though I swear a lot more while doing it now... before I used to quietly meditate on how to get past things as I tried instead of screaming like a wounded sailor :p ).
One thing that can really halt me in my gaming tracks though is having to make important decisions in the game that will effect how the rest of it plays... if they give you multiple characters to use leaving you in the horrible knowledge you'll probably have to play each one one at some point I usually immediately feel my interest waning; I like to focus on one character or party and stick with them rather than spreading my effort around to include characters I quite frankly don't give a damn about :/
Also I am sick, SICK of first person shooters. Not all of them, but generally most of them. Considering that FPSs are pretty much the staple of my gaming, that's quite a big change for me. With my new PC I installed Doom3, played though the first 2 sections of the game, and then just stopped - the repetetiveness is overwhelmingly depressing, the sound effects are annoying, the half-assed implementation of plot and immersiveness does nothing for the game, and the characters are so clichd that there's no point in them being there.
Now Half-Life 2 on the other hand has a wealth of varying situations (like, every step of the game has something unique and interesting to offer not just in visuals but in gameplay), cinematic experiences, much more believable characters with NPC interaction that kicks the crap out of any game that has preceeded it, and most (if not all so far) that have proceeded it.
I guess violence isn't enough to sustain me any more. I need intelligence, I need a <i>soul</i> - a palpable beating heart - behind a first person game. Hence my love of Thief, a game which, despite all its bugs and under-par visuals, has an extremely rich story and setting that makes none of its bad points matter.
Above all in games nowadays I am looking for 'Magic'. I am looking for special games, ones created primarily by artists and not gamers. Shadow of the Collossus, Thief, Warcraft, HL2, Darwinia, Rez; all the games that try and do something new and advance our perceptions of what is possible to experience within a computer game. Think back to when Doom was first released (or Wolfenstein if you're hardcore) - it was new, it was magical, it was scary, it was fun. The mistake iD made was to basically not bother to advance the game -in the slightest- through the next 5 games they released; Quake, Quake2, Quake3, Doom3 - they are all, essentially, the same game with prettier graphics and the occasional interesting scene. I was fine with this, up until Quake3. Doom2 was fun, Quake was new (3 dimensions) and dark and fun, Quake2 was good but starting to grate slightly, Quake3 was just more of the same but with no single player element, and Doom3 was exactly the same with a new engine and new art. Compare iD's game timeline to Valve's - Valve have only released 2 major games, and the evolution from Half-Life to Half-Life 2 is immense. The evolution from Doom to Doom3 is of course impressive, but take away the shiny engine and there's really not any evolution at all other than iD discovering something called 'in-game plot' (and messing that up too by not putting enough thought into it).
For more about 'Magic' read my sig and the link there, which links to a wikiquote entry on the <strike>established</strike> <i>self-pronounced</i> magician Grant Morrison. (Unfortunately the link doesn't seem to be working right now)
In conclusion, I think my changing gaming habits are to do with the fact that games in general are taking a longer time to grow & evolve than me. Coupled with the extensive time I spent gaming whilst younger, I've exhausted the experiences that are on offer and am more interested in playing games that encaptulate their genre extremely well than playing a myriad of lackluster games which don't do much to entertain & 'grow' me.
Some people might want a mindless game time after time. A friend of mine never listens to any in game dialogue. He played hl2 and hl2 ep1, probably doesn't know who alyx is.
He just wants to get on with gaming, running about, shooting enemies, overcoming obstacles and getting more cool gear. Probably while he listens to CD's on his stereo. I'm quite the opposite. I get immersed. When I played doom 3 it was volume up lights out and locked in. I expected intense sh#t scary combat and got it.
I love it when games push the bar, but I guess I also like to get everything out of the current model of gaming before I move on.
My playing habits have changed from when I was first introduced to games (doom1 shareware disk!). Back then I just played for the moment, cheated through and never finished a single game. I dunno when the shift came, but I started playing games seriously (as mentioned above) and really nailing every last minute of entertainment out of them (even went back and finished doom1 & 2 on the hard setting). Plus, either AI got better or my aim got distinctly worse.
I also stopped feeling guilty (thanks mum!) about computer games because they really are awesome and if I could play them every second of every day I probably would (well, maybe do some outdoorsy stuff too, take a laptop outside...).
The prospect of what will come next with computer games seems immensely exciting to me. The immersive nature of being the character makes for a a medium more powerful than film or books.
I suppose games could easily assimilate the elements of music, film, and book into one platform and tell unbelievable stories of distant worlds, rendered in breath taking accuracy and artistic flair. Game development seems to rely a great deal on spot on execution of an idea or ideal.
I think the stories are out there too, just waiting to be told.
I still don't get HL2's NPC interaction... when did we interact with NPCs in HL2? I stopped at Nova Prospekt, but it didn't seem like a fair soulful game to me.
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I actually meant NPC - NPC interactions, not player - NPC interactions. Player - NPC interactions in Half-Life just don't really exist - they tell you what you need to do next, and give you an update on what's going on in the game world, but beyond that Gordon Freeman is just a spectator & instigator of change. In short, Freeman is a tool.
I believe HL2 is extremely soulful, but you have to notice it. There's a huge amount of compassion being displayed between characters all through the game, and also in details such as the graffiti on the walls, 'stories' told through level design...if you're tuned to the right frequency to pick it up, you'll notice it a lot. Or else you can just ignore everything you see and experience and just concentrate on killing the next batch of monsters <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
I totall agree with you Steve that computer games are one of the most exciting entertainment mediums. They can incorporate art, music, sound, theatre, and make it interactive as well! There is no medium that can offer what computer games can offer. That isn't to say CGs are better than other mediums, as such a statement would be ridiculous; but it is a growing artistic medium whose potential benefits should never be understated. It's taking what seems like a very long time to mature though - it's still a young medium, I would say early to mid teens at this stage. I fervently hope and believe that in time CGs will mature to adulthood, and they will be widely considered as artistically meritable as film or literature, perhaps even with greater social benefits that non-interactive mediums like music, film and cinema cannot achieve.
Then again, I'm an aspiring game designer so I would think that. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
[edit] The link in my signature is working again, woo! READ (it's amusing)![/edit]
I don't know, what I saw in HL2 was mostly a mindless shooter. There were hardly any NPC interactions once you got out of the city anyway. Maybe I should go back and beat this accursed turret bit in Nova Prospekt and beat HL2. All my saves got wiped though.
I mean, when Twilight Princess was announced I got really excited for it. Finally playing it, through it's a great game, it just felt like a rehash of Ocarina Of Time. And I didn't get the 80 hours they said the game would be. I clocked in at 41 with 100%.
Same goes for Oblivion; I played Morrowind like a crack addict but I stopped playing Oblivion in four days.
I used to move the controller around when playing all the time... NOW I HAVE A WII! So I broke the habit, now I'm back into it. Awesome sauce.
Meh, I'm more into strategy games now, like the old Command and Conquer series and Starcraft and stuff. Not really into FPS' like I used to be.
In other news, I'm amusing myself by trying to memorise Pi...
3.141519265358979
gotta try harder.
Thats carries through to other games, so I find myself judging a developer's worth by playing the game. BF2, for example, has lots of little bugs, mediocre support, and clunky performance, all of which "bleh" my opinion of Dice. On the other hand, ArenaNet has done a beautiful job with Guild Wars, squashing all but the most trivial of bugs, sponsoring community events, giving their game a little charm, and making their engine hum along on aging computers. Every now and then, they'll do a little something extra so we know they care: they recently updated the appearance of the damage-reporting numbers above characters' heads, giving each type of number (normal, mana drain, healing) subtle effects for quick recognition. Yeah, damage has always been yellow and healing in blue, but now damage numbers <i>pop</i> a little while healing numbers gently float to the heavens. Going in a year and a half later for subtle improvements wins major cool points.
It may be that my brief knowledge of games' innards and good design is deadening my experience a bit, but more likely it's just changing my focus to the more fun points of games.