Has anyone else "gone off" games?
Discussion
vsonix said:
I have been a gamer since my teens, starting with MSX, moving onto Commodore Amiga, then PC and original Xbox. I then stopped for a few years, got back into games again a bit as my lodger works for a games store and gets to borrow stuff from work etc etc. It seems to me that the gaming industry is worth more these days than ever before (look at the sales of GTA5/online) for the big software houses and the indie scene on PS4 is very healthy compared to 10 years ago when indie game were barely worth producing.
However the industry strikes me as very flawed. If you go to the PlayStation store, there are more titles on pre-order than there are available to buy. And the prices are not trivial. It seems to me that PS store is acting more like a kickstarter for the developers! Personally I am loath to pay £50+ for a game that has no release date, has not been reviewed (so may be crap), is not even the full version (DLC or season pass costs extra) and may not even see the light of day!
Furthermore, nobody wants to make decent single player games any more; it's all about multiplayer online frag-fests and microtransactions. If games do have a single-player campaign it's usually woefully short, six to eight hours in length. The 'AAA' titles are all the big yearly franchises where the actual game content varies little year on year - EA sports doing new football or hockey games, new Call of Duty etc.
When you do get something promising like No Man's Sky it ends up totally broken, never to be fixed.
There's a shortage of new fresh ideas. And the hardware manufacturers seem to be all over the place at the moment - Microsoft appear to be in disarray, Steam Box looked promising but seems to be vapourware. Sony could be onto a winner with the VR headsets but have made it too expensive and it's not supported with enough games or VR patches for existing games. Meanwhile there's a '.5' generation due on M$ and P$ which appears to offer few advantages other than 4k which hardly anyone has the screens for, it looks to me like there's a lot of money wasted. The Playstation 4.5 should be set up especially for VR and come with the VR headset!
Pure and simple it seems that value for money for consumers is at an all time low, especially in the console market.
Very much this. As much as I love gaming, the prices are a rip off. MS and Sony have a captive market for their digital stores so are free to charge ridiculous prices for their products (surely there are some sort of monopoly laws around this) to the point the DLC often costs more than the base game. Microtransactions have infested everything now, even single player campaigns, which really annoys me since I've already spent a lot of money on the game and am now being asked to give even more for what are basically cheat codes. Much like you, I have no interest in multiplayer, which generally involves getting utterly destroyed by people who play the game every single day, or idiots out to ruin it for everyone.However the industry strikes me as very flawed. If you go to the PlayStation store, there are more titles on pre-order than there are available to buy. And the prices are not trivial. It seems to me that PS store is acting more like a kickstarter for the developers! Personally I am loath to pay £50+ for a game that has no release date, has not been reviewed (so may be crap), is not even the full version (DLC or season pass costs extra) and may not even see the light of day!
Furthermore, nobody wants to make decent single player games any more; it's all about multiplayer online frag-fests and microtransactions. If games do have a single-player campaign it's usually woefully short, six to eight hours in length. The 'AAA' titles are all the big yearly franchises where the actual game content varies little year on year - EA sports doing new football or hockey games, new Call of Duty etc.
When you do get something promising like No Man's Sky it ends up totally broken, never to be fixed.
There's a shortage of new fresh ideas. And the hardware manufacturers seem to be all over the place at the moment - Microsoft appear to be in disarray, Steam Box looked promising but seems to be vapourware. Sony could be onto a winner with the VR headsets but have made it too expensive and it's not supported with enough games or VR patches for existing games. Meanwhile there's a '.5' generation due on M$ and P$ which appears to offer few advantages other than 4k which hardly anyone has the screens for, it looks to me like there's a lot of money wasted. The Playstation 4.5 should be set up especially for VR and come with the VR headset!
Pure and simple it seems that value for money for consumers is at an all time low, especially in the console market.
The gaming industry must be the only one where it's seen as perfectly acceptable to release a unfinished or faulty product with the promise they'll fix it later. It's rather like Ford releasing a new car where the air con isn't plummed in yet, it flashes up messages on the dash offering extra bhp for a few pounds, and you have to pay another lump sum to unlock the boot.
DLC is a piss take which is why I never buy any, it's pretty irrelevant for single player in my experience anyway, some skins or additional multiplayer maps and occasionally extra single player missions. Even when I've got a goty edition of something I rarely even play additional content unless it embedded. Never seen microtransactions in single player.
If you buy specifically single player games there is usually plenty of content in the default. Just looking at my steam stats FO4 - 175hrs, Mad Max 76hrs, Shadows of Mordor 40hrs all open world type games all vanilla and tbh I was getting bored of them by the time I reached those hours.
Rise of the TR 31hrs, Dishonoured 27hrs, Bioshocks, Doom, Batman, Wolfenstein all around 20hrs with no MP. That's reasonable vfm in my opinion.
I actually think games can be too long, I'd rather had a short concise quality experience than one that's 100+hrs and filled with grind. Take a look at No Mans Sky, practically infinite in scope but it was mostly dull repetitive makework.
If you buy specifically single player games there is usually plenty of content in the default. Just looking at my steam stats FO4 - 175hrs, Mad Max 76hrs, Shadows of Mordor 40hrs all open world type games all vanilla and tbh I was getting bored of them by the time I reached those hours.
Rise of the TR 31hrs, Dishonoured 27hrs, Bioshocks, Doom, Batman, Wolfenstein all around 20hrs with no MP. That's reasonable vfm in my opinion.
I actually think games can be too long, I'd rather had a short concise quality experience than one that's 100+hrs and filled with grind. Take a look at No Mans Sky, practically infinite in scope but it was mostly dull repetitive makework.
The key thing i've took from current gen console gaming, having been a 'gamer' since ZX spectrum and Amiga 500 days, is that having invested so much time into a game like Forza 4 (the pinnacle of the franchise IMO) like a silly ammount of time and energy into it, to then have to basiclaly start again but with better graphics and less content I just can't do it anymore, so Forza 6 hardly has been played.
Some of that is also down to PCars /AC /DiRT/SLRE and being a bit more serious with those with wheel etc, but still i can't invest all that time again into Forza.
Same happened with Fallout 4, pretty much the same feeling as Fallout 3 but with none of the feel of suprise or the new, so hardely played it and i played Fallout 3 LOADS.
Also 2nd thing with current gen is.... I wait. Then one day i'll nip into CEX or GAME and i can't believe the discounts on games after sometimes only a week! And that's before you factor in finding gold nuggets in the 2nd hand section, AAA games down to £5 £10, at those prices its worth it as you always can find the cost back....
If your willing to not pre order and wait a bit you get cheaper games with all the updates done and dusted! And by that point the DLC price is on offer sometimes as well!
Some of that is also down to PCars /AC /DiRT/SLRE and being a bit more serious with those with wheel etc, but still i can't invest all that time again into Forza.
Same happened with Fallout 4, pretty much the same feeling as Fallout 3 but with none of the feel of suprise or the new, so hardely played it and i played Fallout 3 LOADS.
Also 2nd thing with current gen is.... I wait. Then one day i'll nip into CEX or GAME and i can't believe the discounts on games after sometimes only a week! And that's before you factor in finding gold nuggets in the 2nd hand section, AAA games down to £5 £10, at those prices its worth it as you always can find the cost back....
If your willing to not pre order and wait a bit you get cheaper games with all the updates done and dusted! And by that point the DLC price is on offer sometimes as well!
I've pretty much given up on anything other than Civ 5 (soon to be Civ 6, if Santa has got my message).
I think it's an ageing/character thing. I like playing a game, but at a languid pace, and without too much challenge if I'm honest. I spent the last ten years buying the games everyone told me to and failing to get in to them.
I used to play FPS a lot, but the modern trend of not being able to save at will frustrates me, so once I've tried to get past the same very hard segment ~ten times, I just give up.
And as others have said, I'm just not interested in multiplayer. I get the impression game designers therefore don't care about me.
Hopefully I will enjoy Civ 6, and won't have to worry for another few years.
I think it's an ageing/character thing. I like playing a game, but at a languid pace, and without too much challenge if I'm honest. I spent the last ten years buying the games everyone told me to and failing to get in to them.
I used to play FPS a lot, but the modern trend of not being able to save at will frustrates me, so once I've tried to get past the same very hard segment ~ten times, I just give up.
And as others have said, I'm just not interested in multiplayer. I get the impression game designers therefore don't care about me.
Hopefully I will enjoy Civ 6, and won't have to worry for another few years.
I play a lot, lot less than I used to.
I think the 'industry' is going one way, me another.
Games these days seem to be focused on on-line gaming, okay fair enough, a human opponent is harder to beat than an AI one, but where I think they were hoping it would make for more varied games, it’s done the opposite IMO, the COD type games are probably the worse for me, and I know I’m pretty much alone in this but they’re mostly terrible – the story modes get shorter with every passing game and only serve as a training scheme for the online – the online, well it’s a nightmare of ADD and caffeine – standard role playing tactics count for nothing, it’s kill, die, kill, die, kill, kill, die, die, kill, die about 30 times in 6 mins, and it soon boils down to who knows the latest tactic or cheat, quick scoping, oh this bin in this map, or this corner in that, for a few days at least until the counter is discovered – it’s all very formulaic and to be good at it you need to be so in-tune that all detail is lost – you’re pretty much ‘in the matrix’ looking through the screen and responding to the right colour target.
I loved GTV5, it was/is a masterpiece, but I completed it in a few weeks (I only play a few times a week) ran through it again, and then went online. It’s like a fancy Freemium mobile game, yeah they trot out a few new cars every few weeks but they’re just a reskin of that last one with a few tiny tweaks, new guns which really are just the same, and they cost fortunes – people spend hours, days even grinding the same missions, doing them in exactly the same way to earn the virtual money to buy the latest thing – if you try do something news other players lose their minds because you’re taking too long or heaven forbid it doesn’t work.
I thought my limited bandwidth at home was the thing that put me off, 50ms ping and 4Mbps can make for a laggy experience, but I’ve finally got fibre at home now, 6ms and 100Mbps, yeah it doesn’t lag, but the game is still the game. Here’s another 15 goes at Rooftop Rumble to buy a rifle which works like the last one. I’d happily pay £15 for some story DLC, if it was good enough I’d pay another £50 or whatever it costs for a full game based on the same map, but there’s too much money to be made from ‘free’ online content and ‘shark cards’.
I’ve recently bought a GPU and knocked myself up a bit of a gaming PC, nothing fancy but plays most games in 1080p fairly decently, a bought ‘The Division’ didn’t really work at first, then did, but whilst the premise is pretty good, it’s a story with a start and no middle or end and the missions are repetitive grinds – kill baddie, gain XP, get bigger gun, next baddie is stronger, kill him, gain XP, get bigger gun. It’s acceptable on a mobile game you might play for 20 mins a day, but on a £40 title? Nah.
Star Wars Battlefront, I had the first two on PS2, they were great fun little games – this version looks great, is crap – it’s more COD than COD, kill, die, kill, die, kill, die, kill, die – no story, no characters, all pop and no fizz.
I have high hopes for Read Dead Redemption 2, but I fear the makers are already spending all day thinking about pushing a lot of on-line content and paid for in-game stuff and not too much time thinking about a decent story and missions with a bit of verity.
I think the 'industry' is going one way, me another.
Games these days seem to be focused on on-line gaming, okay fair enough, a human opponent is harder to beat than an AI one, but where I think they were hoping it would make for more varied games, it’s done the opposite IMO, the COD type games are probably the worse for me, and I know I’m pretty much alone in this but they’re mostly terrible – the story modes get shorter with every passing game and only serve as a training scheme for the online – the online, well it’s a nightmare of ADD and caffeine – standard role playing tactics count for nothing, it’s kill, die, kill, die, kill, kill, die, die, kill, die about 30 times in 6 mins, and it soon boils down to who knows the latest tactic or cheat, quick scoping, oh this bin in this map, or this corner in that, for a few days at least until the counter is discovered – it’s all very formulaic and to be good at it you need to be so in-tune that all detail is lost – you’re pretty much ‘in the matrix’ looking through the screen and responding to the right colour target.
I loved GTV5, it was/is a masterpiece, but I completed it in a few weeks (I only play a few times a week) ran through it again, and then went online. It’s like a fancy Freemium mobile game, yeah they trot out a few new cars every few weeks but they’re just a reskin of that last one with a few tiny tweaks, new guns which really are just the same, and they cost fortunes – people spend hours, days even grinding the same missions, doing them in exactly the same way to earn the virtual money to buy the latest thing – if you try do something news other players lose their minds because you’re taking too long or heaven forbid it doesn’t work.
I thought my limited bandwidth at home was the thing that put me off, 50ms ping and 4Mbps can make for a laggy experience, but I’ve finally got fibre at home now, 6ms and 100Mbps, yeah it doesn’t lag, but the game is still the game. Here’s another 15 goes at Rooftop Rumble to buy a rifle which works like the last one. I’d happily pay £15 for some story DLC, if it was good enough I’d pay another £50 or whatever it costs for a full game based on the same map, but there’s too much money to be made from ‘free’ online content and ‘shark cards’.
I’ve recently bought a GPU and knocked myself up a bit of a gaming PC, nothing fancy but plays most games in 1080p fairly decently, a bought ‘The Division’ didn’t really work at first, then did, but whilst the premise is pretty good, it’s a story with a start and no middle or end and the missions are repetitive grinds – kill baddie, gain XP, get bigger gun, next baddie is stronger, kill him, gain XP, get bigger gun. It’s acceptable on a mobile game you might play for 20 mins a day, but on a £40 title? Nah.
Star Wars Battlefront, I had the first two on PS2, they were great fun little games – this version looks great, is crap – it’s more COD than COD, kill, die, kill, die, kill, die, kill, die – no story, no characters, all pop and no fizz.
I have high hopes for Read Dead Redemption 2, but I fear the makers are already spending all day thinking about pushing a lot of on-line content and paid for in-game stuff and not too much time thinking about a decent story and missions with a bit of verity.
tommunster10 said:
Also 2nd thing with current gen is.... I wait. Then one day i'll nip into CEX or GAME and i can't believe the discounts on games after sometimes only a week! And that's before you factor in finding gold nuggets in the 2nd hand section, AAA games down to £5 £10, at those prices its worth it as you always can find the cost back....
The 360/PS3 generation was the last great second hand one. You might be able to by a base PS4/One game cheaply, but the problem is almost all of them have a vast amount of DLC which hardly ever goes on sale. As an example, a complete edition of Forza 6 is on sale right now over XBL - £93.28! CEX sell the base game for £20 by comparison. They're also selling Horizon 2 complete for a "bargain" £45, but the servers have been playing up for weeks without a word of official supportI've never been a massive gamer but tend to get addicted to certain games and play that and only that solidly for months (Vice City, the original Black Ops, MW3, etc.) I'm a big fan of the COD series (pre jumpy suit era) and I'm still getting many hours on Ghosts. The game got a bad reputation but I love the gameplay and maps. My son has just got the Infinite Warfare Legacy edition. We're both currently addicted to the remastered Modern Warfare again. There's a lot more campers and snipers to contend with which I had forgotten about but the game is so much better than the modern versions.
Re gta i think it's refreshing that the dlc are free , that you can still be competitive in a free car such as the elegy/zio/felon/dominator.
Battlefield games are more than just killing , to do well you need people in the team willing to hang back and repair the tanks etc , you need people willing to be medics are heal your team rather than just kill the enemy .
Battlefield games are more than just killing , to do well you need people in the team willing to hang back and repair the tanks etc , you need people willing to be medics are heal your team rather than just kill the enemy .
Gaming has always been an expensive pursuit so I'm not sure it has changed in that respect - I can still remember handing over £60 for a NBA Jam on the SNES (what was I thinking!). I have never paid that much before or since.
I agree with the above people though about the AAA games being all multiplayer focussed and less 'fun'. Gaming, for me, peaked with the SNES and Amiga 500. I think (on PC at least) some of that artistry and imagination can be found in the indie game scene. I'm keenly awaiting Thimbleweed Park to recapture some of that Monkey Island magic!
I agree with the above people though about the AAA games being all multiplayer focussed and less 'fun'. Gaming, for me, peaked with the SNES and Amiga 500. I think (on PC at least) some of that artistry and imagination can be found in the indie game scene. I'm keenly awaiting Thimbleweed Park to recapture some of that Monkey Island magic!
Agree with you P-jay I lament the rich single player world that used to be available to gamers, I still have my copy of GTA Vice City and San Andreas as they are the high point for me in terms of a gaming sandbox. I've bought but yet to start Dishonored 2, hoping it will be as good as it makes out to be 
Mr Snrub said:
Very much this. As much as I love gaming, the prices are a rip off. MS and Sony have a captive market for their digital stores so are free to charge ridiculous prices for their products (surely there are some sort of monopoly laws around this) to the point the DLC often costs more than the base game.
Apparently the high download prices are in part due to agreements with the big retailers - Sony & M$ having to promise the likes of Tesco et al that their download stores won't undercut the price of the physical games as otherwise the retailers won't bother stocking them. However of course at least with physical copies of the game you can at least take it down CeX or whatever when you're done and claw back £20 or so - you buy the download and that's it you're 100% committed for life. I do like tpo pick up bargains and i hate preordering but having said that as a now non drinker (4 years) /smoker (10 years) and as such don't go out on the lash anymore as have kids etc, i find gaming the cheapest past time I've ever had. I used to spend 200-500 per weekend in the old days, that's booze, marching powder and or McMills and chuck in few stag do's, i was spending a lot of cash on nothing.
Yes i'm glad i did all of that and yes i'm a very very dull person now, but i made it through and lived (it is possible kids).
So yeah spending £5 to 40 odd quid on a game isn't really that bad for me as it's wonderful entertainment for me in my sad life!
For example PCars i purchased for 25 quid 2nd hand about 1 year ago, all DLC so stands me at about £50-60.... but my game time is measured at 864 hours....... i told you i was sad..but thats some serious value for money..
Yes i'm glad i did all of that and yes i'm a very very dull person now, but i made it through and lived (it is possible kids).
So yeah spending £5 to 40 odd quid on a game isn't really that bad for me as it's wonderful entertainment for me in my sad life!
For example PCars i purchased for 25 quid 2nd hand about 1 year ago, all DLC so stands me at about £50-60.... but my game time is measured at 864 hours....... i told you i was sad..but thats some serious value for money..
Used to love games, never had much money so I didn't get new ones very often, and played them to death, but that pretty much ended around 2010.
Since then I bought quite a lot of new games for a year or two, after I got a job, but finished just about none of them.
I got GTA and finished the story mode about 3 times now, put loads of hours into MGS5 and even done most of the side-ops. And I've put a lot of time into Forza 6.
Games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, though, I loved F3 and Oblivion, and put hours and hours into both. The recent iterations, though, just don't draw me in any more. I spent quite a bit of time on Skyrim but never finished it, and Fallout 4, I played for a few hours and traded in, along with 90% of my X360 and PS3 games.
Couple weeks ago I bought BF1 and quite enjoy it, totally sucks though! I was never brilliant at Modern Warfare 1 or 2 but usually got more kills than deaths, but I can't see myself getting that good again.
I miss the days when I was new to Xbox live, used to play Halo 3 daily, and Gears 2 Horde and Co-op on Insane mode with a friend from school. Good times.
Since then I bought quite a lot of new games for a year or two, after I got a job, but finished just about none of them.
I got GTA and finished the story mode about 3 times now, put loads of hours into MGS5 and even done most of the side-ops. And I've put a lot of time into Forza 6.
Games like Fallout 4 and Skyrim, though, I loved F3 and Oblivion, and put hours and hours into both. The recent iterations, though, just don't draw me in any more. I spent quite a bit of time on Skyrim but never finished it, and Fallout 4, I played for a few hours and traded in, along with 90% of my X360 and PS3 games.
Couple weeks ago I bought BF1 and quite enjoy it, totally sucks though! I was never brilliant at Modern Warfare 1 or 2 but usually got more kills than deaths, but I can't see myself getting that good again.
I miss the days when I was new to Xbox live, used to play Halo 3 daily, and Gears 2 Horde and Co-op on Insane mode with a friend from school. Good times.
I'm another one that doesn't play anymore. I don't have kids or anything so still have the time to do it if I want to I just can't be bothered any more.
I used to love first person starting with doom going through to unreal tournament and half life. I spent millennium eve at a LAN party. Spent a lot of time creating boot disks to get the best out of my pc in the days of dos 6.22. I've had a snes, game cube, wii, ps1,2 & 3, xbox and xbone. Played hours of GTA, gran turismo and forza but now I don't play anything.
I think the complexity of games is part of the downfall for me, yes they are visually stunning and there's loads that can be done in them but all that takes a lot to learn and I can't be bothered. Also with the online play everyone else just mullers me as my skills are no where near as sharp as theirs.
I might dig out some of my old consoles for a bit of nostalgia but I've no interest in the latest stuff any more.
I used to love first person starting with doom going through to unreal tournament and half life. I spent millennium eve at a LAN party. Spent a lot of time creating boot disks to get the best out of my pc in the days of dos 6.22. I've had a snes, game cube, wii, ps1,2 & 3, xbox and xbone. Played hours of GTA, gran turismo and forza but now I don't play anything.
I think the complexity of games is part of the downfall for me, yes they are visually stunning and there's loads that can be done in them but all that takes a lot to learn and I can't be bothered. Also with the online play everyone else just mullers me as my skills are no where near as sharp as theirs.
I might dig out some of my old consoles for a bit of nostalgia but I've no interest in the latest stuff any more.
I have been playing games since the days of the Binatone, then Atari, Colecovision, Amiga, NES, PC Engine, Neo Geo, SNES, PS 1, 2, 3 & 4, Saturn DC, N64 blah blah blah.
I am well and truly bored of games now, if they keep my attention for more than 2 hours they have done well, if I don't finish it in 3 nights I generally don't bother with it again.
There are however exceptions, Nintendo still grabs me, Zelda, Mario etc.
They just know how to make fun games.
The more realistic graphics get the quicker I seem to get bored of the games, with the exception of racing games, but even then, I am looking forward to the new Daytona more than any other racer.
I am well and truly bored of games now, if they keep my attention for more than 2 hours they have done well, if I don't finish it in 3 nights I generally don't bother with it again.
There are however exceptions, Nintendo still grabs me, Zelda, Mario etc.
They just know how to make fun games.
The more realistic graphics get the quicker I seem to get bored of the games, with the exception of racing games, but even then, I am looking forward to the new Daytona more than any other racer.
Bungleaio said:
I'm another one that doesn't play anymore. I don't have kids or anything so still have the time to do it if I want to I just can't be bothered any more.
I used to love first person starting with doom going through to unreal tournament and half life. I spent millennium eve at a LAN party. Spent a lot of time creating boot disks to get the best out of my pc in the days of dos 6.22. I've had a snes, game cube, wii, ps1,2 & 3, xbox and xbone. Played hours of GTA, gran turismo and forza but now I don't play anything.
ah yes! old school lan parties pre dsl era! fantastic! I remember rocking up at a small lan in Basingstoke stoked to play the day's best titles with a load of mates only to spend the entire weekend playing a version of bomberman some guy had made for 60+ people all using their own usb controllers. He then projected it onto an entire wall of the venue. Between projector games, drinking and jumping over fires I don't think any of us played a single round of Q3a or UT.I used to love first person starting with doom going through to unreal tournament and half life. I spent millennium eve at a LAN party. Spent a lot of time creating boot disks to get the best out of my pc in the days of dos 6.22. I've had a snes, game cube, wii, ps1,2 & 3, xbox and xbone. Played hours of GTA, gran turismo and forza but now I don't play anything.
I used to be in a Counter Strike/TFC/Day of Defeat clan.
There was always someone online for a game and I had regular 2/3/4am sessions we had members of all ages teenagers up to 50's plus mostly UK but a few from across europe.
Once a year we did a LAN party all day job the early years and this is when you had to carry a crt monitor about. Later they went 24hrs but more time was spent drinking/eating/pub than gaming. It's strange being in a pub being address by your 'tag' and telling Lemming you'll have a pint.
Happy days.
There was always someone online for a game and I had regular 2/3/4am sessions we had members of all ages teenagers up to 50's plus mostly UK but a few from across europe.
Once a year we did a LAN party all day job the early years and this is when you had to carry a crt monitor about. Later they went 24hrs but more time was spent drinking/eating/pub than gaming. It's strange being in a pub being address by your 'tag' and telling Lemming you'll have a pint.
Happy days.
Gassing Station | Video Games | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff