Tales of an Aging Gamer: We keep getting older, the games stay the same
There are many factors at play.<p>----------
1. Gaming is an escapism.<p>That&#x27;s why many people hesitate to call themselves gamers or even admit it in certain (more conservative) social settings. Thinking back, gaming was a chill activity for me only a single-digit percent of the time and now at 38 y&#x2F;o I am ashamed that I didn&#x27;t admit that to myself earlier. And yes, many people still view &quot;gamers&quot; and teenagers with no cares at all. They haven&#x27;t noticed that the world changed and these teenagers now play together with their kids. And that even company CEOs have admitted to be gaming.<p>----------
2. Games aren&#x27;t increasing in diversity or quality.<p>Quite the contrary, even the big AAA studios drop the ball and start milking nostalgia -- recent releases like Fallout 76 and WoW&#x27;s latest expansion Battle for Azeroth are a prime example. Them not being quality games is not an universal truth of course but if you visit any gaming forum outlet you&#x27;ll quickly discover they are a very divisive topic. This wasn&#x27;t true even as back as 2-3 years ago for many games (the above two included).<p>----------
3. I&#x27;m glad the article debunked that your abilities start to deteriorate at your 30s.<p>At 38 I can still pop in a random Quake3 server and absolutely dominate the others there. Many times they teamed up 5v1 against me and still lost on total score. As you get &quot;older&quot; (if 30s are &quot;being old&quot;) your abilities can even self-perfect -- my wife several times noted that when I played a game for a week and quit it and then got back to it 6 months later I was suddenly extremely good at it and better than her who played it casually for those 6 months. It&#x27;s as if your brain has been periodically replaying your experience with the game and gradually perfected the schemata that makes you much more efficient at the game. Probably while you slept.<p>----------
4. Aggressive monetization.<p>As the stable income from selling games dwindles, many businessmen imagine that they are forced to introduce microtransactions or release half-finished games and then basically make you pay for a DLC that costs as much as the original game itself for you to get the &quot;full&quot; game -- this isn&#x27;t an undeniable fact but many feel that way about a lot of EA &#x2F; Ubisoft games.<p>Whatever the reason, microtransactions are killing the desire of many to play. We the humans get emotionally invested in everything we do. The fact that the businesses want to prey on the sunk cost fallacy, or nostalgia, or bait-and-switch tactics, is something that even people at 20 years old now reliably detect and try to stay away from.<p>The customers are getting smarter and the business makes less and less effort to market &#x2F; advertise their games in an appealing way. Cleavage shots or shiny costumes and mounts don&#x27;t seem to be cutting it anymore -- or at least not so well as the businesses would like.<p>----------
5. Our priorities change, yes.<p>I ain&#x27;t gonna bore anyone with sob stories but I had a pretty awful life and learned helplessness is something I have to fight my every waking second (people keep telling me I do an awesome job and I honestly can&#x27;t believe it and that&#x27;s not a fake modesty, I really can&#x27;t; many other examples abound). At certain point you just sit down and start thinking what you are doing with your life -- and time, and energy. That the popular breeds of gaming lost most of its appeal is indeed a gradual process as the article assesses it to be.<p>And I indeed don&#x27;t care about competition, like at all. Nobody can tempt me with &quot;you&#x27;re just afraid I am gonna beat you&quot;. I just shrug and say &quot;you&#x27;re a champion, are we done with this discussion?&quot;.<p>Me and my wife recently chatted at length about our diminished pleasure in games and concluded that we are gonna buy a PS4 Pro and a very comfy couch and probably won&#x27;t touch a multiplayer game more than a few times a year. It&#x27;s just how it is. She gets a lot of calming influence from just trying to figure out the next Lara Croft puzzle or a movement sequence so the character cat get somewhere important. And watching her play sometimes, I get the same vibes.<p>That, and some casual and non-engaging games like Smash Bros. You can just hop in, play a bit, get out. Which brings me to my last point...<p>----------
6. Games try very hard to pull you in, addict you and make you feel like they are your life.<p>There are plenty of gullible human beings that fall for that and they are probably the reason why many modern games even survive.<p>As an &quot;older&quot; gamer I miss the experience of starting a game, typing a nickname somewhere, joining a server, playing for how much you want, and then getting out. No central servers, no character progression, no worries that somebody paid their way to them dominating you.<p>Games like Half Life, Quake 2 and 3, Re-Volt and Star Wars Episode 1 Racer (two of the best racing games I ever played!), and the fighting games like Mortal Kombat were perfect for this. They had a compelling gameplay but didn&#x27;t try to tie you to anything. If you wanted to play, you came back. There were no psychological tactics to make you come back for more. They already sold you the game -- whether you are gonna play 1 hour in total or waste your life in it doesn&#x27;t bother them.<p>----------<p>I believe for many mature games this is the strongest factor. Stop trying to make us believe your game is our life. Make a good game. Make paying only for cosmetics or minor quality-of-life improvements.  Put in good net code.<p>Gamers will come. You won&#x27;t have to do absurd marketing campaigns all over YouTube. People will come to you by word of mouth if your game is not scummy.<p>But IMO gaming will have to almost die until it gets back to what made it popular and awesome in the first place.