Games don't hold my interest like they used to.

[sggg]

Originally posted by cka
I had shinobi this weekend, and well, when it wasn't frustrating as hell (HI MOTH BOSS!), it was kinda boring just running around slashing the crap out of stuff.

You've got to learn how to use the dash and then dart around all over the place and behind enemies and not take hits. That's where the fun/challenge is! If you're "slashing the crap out of stuff" you're playing it wrong and it's no surprise you were finding it boring.

[cka]

I figured out the air tate manoeuver, but it was still irritating trying to pull it off successfully without plumetting into the lava... As for "slashing the crap outta stuff", I do tend to avoid enemies and whatnot, trying to take as few hits as possible. Still find it kinda boring. Shinobi is a good game, though.

[GameFreak]

Ste-Von, the same thing has happened to me from time to time.

1. As you get older you just don't have the time to play that you used to as a kid. How many twenty-somethings---thirty-somethings do you see playing pickup basketball every day of the week?

I used to play ball almost every day as a teenager, now I can't, why should games be different?

2. Responsibilty? Problems, sometimes you've got things going on in your life that don't allow you to enjoy your games the way they were meant to be enjoyed.

3. Let's face it, lots of games nowadays SUCK. The magic isn't there.

They're not worth the time.


A truly great game will hold your interest. Metroid Fusion has sucked me in, that hasn't happened in a while, I'm sure Halo 2 will too.

[Xero_Kaiser]

there's only 2 things I really do. Play video games and draw. and as I get older, I find myself doing these things more if anything. yeah, I've got a job but I always seem to find time to play the games I want.

[J2d]

Just had a run of bad luck lately.
I put some effort into unlocking the movies in Gungrave so I could see the one with the little girl but I didn't unlock it with an all A ranking so I gave up.

No Mr Driller thread, I want to compete! And I don't know anything about the other versions so I'm not suitable to make one, come on Pacrappa!

My boot disck is ruined, no more Giga Wing 2 for a while.

Started playing DMC again but unless we get a highscore board for orbs(I've got around 500,000+) I'm not gonna pick it up any time soon.

[skullkid]

Here is a theroy. When your a kid you can't afford many games so you play the ones you have to death. When your an adult you have lots of money so you just buy everything that looks good, not giving yourself enough time to finish anything. Plus as an adult you don't have as much free time. It's a fact of life

[Brisco Bold]

Originally posted by cka
I figured out the air tate manoeuver, but it was still irritating trying to pull it off successfully without plumetting into the lava... As for "slashing the crap outta stuff", I do tend to avoid enemies and whatnot, trying to take as few hits as possible. Still find it kinda boring. Shinobi is a good game, though.

When those flying thingies appear, don't automatically attack them. Jump up and down on the platform and let them surround you so that if you miss them, you don't fall in the lava you fall on the platform.

[GameHED]

I think it happens in waves. You spend lots of time playing a game and the mind becomes numbed after a while, and you get tired and a little restless.

Then you take a big break (go for a walk, the gym, a movie, anywhere away from the tv) and feel refreshed and the need to play comes back again.

But as more games come out, it's hard to take long breaks because you want to finish them. But in order to finish some of them, they require 100% of your attention for a long period of time (sometimes you can't commit a 3 hour session or whatever, and a short session of play may not be worth the time starting for some of the longer games.)

In the old days of carts and 2d world there was less information for the brain to process at any one time because of less system memory (pretty much what determines sizes of levels or chunks of the game) or space on the cart. (plus you didn't need ultra high resolutions because there was simple detail that wasn't distracting to the brain, nor need analogue sticks to refine moves according to pitch, nor long memories of the strucure of a level to find your way - ie Zelda Water Temple )

See, it just takes longer to totally absorb yourself into the game with all the extra stuff, and the pitfalls (for failing in getting to know the system of play) have become wider. I was playing morrowind the the other day, and I felt like I knew what I was doing but because quests tend to appear all over the place before you knew or expected to have them offered to you, you tend to feel scared to test the boundaries of the gameworld for fear you may stuff something up or lock yourself out of something in the future.(because of bad decisions made early on)

This is why I tend to focus on 1 thing at a time because some games require all of your attention in big chunks (so you don't forget what you're doing) but because there are more games overall coming out, (and in increasing numbers) it's hard to keep yourself focused on the 1 thing at a time when you're distracted by other games too.

In the old days you could rent a game and finish it within a night, but not today. (well maybe it is possible, but your brain is less willing to do so because you will get restless and need a break. Partly because 3d worlds reqire more overhead in terms of looking and scanning an area before you do anything (there are objects obstructing your view of an area) and the fact there is more space to manipulate in 3d than 2d, taking up more time in general)

One thing that really gives me an incentive to keep playing something on and on was the self reward system of games in the past. Where the game tricked you into believing you were limited in seeing or doing something, but then on further play and later on down the road as you got better and experimented with new ways, it becomes apparent that a new level of play has opened up as a result of a new item, a new technique, or a unique way the level had been carefully structured for you to see the forbidden zones of the cartridge. This kind of gave you the thrill of wanting to keep playing on, and wanting to see and do more based on how much knowledge you applied to the game or the risks you wanted to take - a self reward system: you only saw how ever much you wanted to see (not contrived like today's games where it costs the developers time to create thier world so you are force-fed it) or however much effort you put in to think up ways to find your way around.

Whatever you put in, was whatever you got out of it ..but the more you put in, the more apreciation of the game you had as your interest slowly ballooned and it become much bigger than you expected - like opening a broom closet door and finding out it leads to a new "world" instead of a tiny dead end. (this is why in classic adventure games the main thing is 'exploration' and 'clue' finding, but these days that has been dumbed down so the masses can see everything the designers had made for "free" by guiding them and pointing the way in a linear fashion; with minimal variation in how prior events could actually change the current and future outcome. (you are in a play being a character, not being yourself. Alternate endings vs Alternate paths leading to unpredictable results) It's not a sandbox where your imagination of "things to come" excites you enough to get you playing to the next area anymore, but more like a theme park where you know what thrill you'll get from the experience but after a while, that part of the brain alerts you to the on-rails nature of things making you less excited the next time around.)

Another thing over my years of gaming that I've found is the sense of achievment you get from "self improvment" in a game and see that by being a little bit better at various small things, you can have a very big effect on your overall performance so that it shows off in front of normal players. But some games today don't seem as refined in that special way (like shaving off milliseconds in mario Kart) that diferentiates you in tiny ways to make the game seem all the more enjoyable. Like I was playing rayman 2 and realised just how flat the level of achievment was between a really good player playing as good as he can based on what the game could allow for him (because rayman is slow it's hard to play it in an "exciting way") ..and.. an average player playing for the first time and just soaking up the atmoshpere and learning as he goes. It remained flat in the enjoyment factor after a certain level of play-throughs. Other people watching a good player playing the game had little to be excited about because at a glance, it was the same thing being performed. No reward once you reach the top of the mountain. Once the good player has done and seen thngs, and realises his brain is no longer being stimulated by increasingly-more complex challenges on the higher level of play, he/she is likely to tune out. Which is the nature of games of today where they seem a little "disposable" (you buy them, win them ie "see" an ending movie, sell them off, never wondering about how much more enjoyable it could have been to play them a different way. Story being the main focus) rather than timeless and enjoyable and worth keeping in the collection and replaying. (super bomberman 2 - still got it, still play it, still enjoyable)

You see this gradual level of "self-improvement as an addiction factor" in multiplayer modes of play where you are free to approach things based on little assumption about the limits of the game. (Because you have to do things for yourself and find where the boundaries are.) Unpredictable results through many playthroughs force you to think in as many perspecitves as possible to try to bring some sense and control to your success and the relation of this to the enviroment and people in them, and you become interested through natural "emergent" gameplay. ie players discovering/creating ways of playing not foreseen by game designer.

Yaumuchi had a good point about gaming getting too much like movies and stuff where you sit through it, know what's going to happen ahead of time (like a movie you've seen too many times) and get bored. The key for getting me interested is letting me use my own brain to work my way through problems and ways of playing, (the creative side balanced with the logic side) rather than never letting me bend rules and keeping me detached from my alter ego in the game. (the "character" I'm controlling who designers have placed more importance on than the gamer himself. Preffering as they do to focus on the story that is tied to that "character" rather than gameplay.)
Instead of being in control of the character, the character limits who I can become, or what I should do, or where I can go, and how I can express myself in gameplay. (don't get me wrong I love a good story and great characters, especially presented well, but there needs to be that magic balance where the designers allow a bit of mystery about the characters (to allow them to "grow" rather than follow the current conventions of what they think everyone wants and then realising it is no different from every other character) and they are not the sole selling point to the games anymore.

I've noticed the pressure lately of gaming/games "having to be cool" rather than just be good games. You can see it in the console bashing threads of nintendo and thier "kiddy image" and how gaming is becoming more focused on adults these days when in the past they were all ages and themes weren't so important. Couple this with the death of certain genres and the fact that it is more commercialised than in the past (remember the days of original games being made with a new release? Because people's ideas were enough to keep people interested and there wasn't millions of dollars being gambled) and you have the current state of gaming as getting a little bit stale despite the newer technology and increased power. (increased power just meaning more of the same rather than game designers taking big advantage to realise an idea that was not possible before with older technology for whatever reason) The main factor is the increased size and dollars dictating that we must repeat whatever is going to be a success, which gets in the way of freshness in gaming today. It's been so long since I was actually "excited" to get home and couldn't wait to play a new game I just bought. You can partly attribute it on my age and "me just being jaded and needing a break", but it is also to do with games having changed focus from the days of old. On one hand you need $ to stay around, on the other you need innovation in gameplay to stay fresh enough to keep old gamers coming back.

[Grasso]

Well I think after you get some good pussy games are no longer the priority in life.

[GameHED]

^
Yeah but what about this guy?