Why Aren't Games Fun Anymore?

The sequel to this video: What The Internet Did to Gaming - https://youtu.be/m8RomiudgPA If you guys are interested, I've been doing livestreams here on the channel of mostly Souls content, come by and check them out if you want to hang. The streams are M-F 7:30 PM EST. Join the Biscord to know when I'm live: discord.gg/d4u6QQAdC2

1. No, I do NOT want to make yet another account. 2. No, I do NOT want to be online. 3. No, I do NOT enjoy paying for additional content and lootboxes 4. No, I do NOT enjoy ads. 5. No, I do NOT care about marketing buzzwords, I just want a fleshed out story with a quiet protagonist and a villain with understandable but ultimately mistaken morals.

Games feel more like a job now. Hours of grinding. Very little pay off.

We as buyers have the power. If we stop buying...we send a message. But that will never happen.

By the time I hit the power button, a disturbing noise comes up “Are you playing video games again?”

I personally don't have the time anymore to dedicate 50+ hours to gaming. The indie scene is what allows me to play unique games without too much time commitment

Playing retro games I never had before (and no nostalgia) is still more fun than whatever the latest and greatest games are. There are so many great classics for only a few dollars, and not a micro transaction in sight. The goal was just to make an enjoyable good game, not to discover the most efficient way of extracting money from their consumers.

Imagine randomly diving your sub around the globe (yes, entire globe) sifting through the ocean and randomly stumbling upon Emerald Weapon, who is not tied to the main story and you can beat the game without ever knowing he's in it. No trailer, no streamer / twitch blogs about it. No walkthrough to prepare you for the fight.

They're still fun, it's just the weight of the world crushed your soul

I always dreamt of having a gaming pc. Now that i have it, i also have responsibilities, I just can't play games "stresslessly" the way i used to play before. It's sad.

have the same feeling for movies also, i would prefer old movies in early 2000s rather than new ones.

Smaller, more polished experiences > 120 hour open worlds with a lifeless empty world

I've seen stats that suggest Gen Z don't game anywhere near as much as Millennials. My theory is that Millennials are a captive audience who remember the golden age of gaming and cling on to it for dear life while Gen Z grew up in the PS3/PS4 era with broken game launches and insanely predadtory financial practices.

Big companies found out how much was in it, bought out the dev teams, and hired yes men. That’s why.

I'm a bit old now, overcriticizing each game for one thing or another but this saved me money overall. The thing that annoys me most is that people can't hold off their hands from the "pre-order" button until the game is released and check some reviews for it. If this can be achieved, gaming companies will be forced to be extra careful what are they releasing.

SimCity 4 is one rare game that gets better each year thanks to its modding community. It's better today than 22 years ago, and still playable and even more demanding. Shout out to the community. Thanks.

We are growing up I guess 😢

While I agree with most of what was said here, particularly with regards to the sheer size of the game world, but sometimes I wonder how much of this just comes down to age and digital downloads. When I was younger and didn't own as many games, I had infinite patience to explore every nook and cranny, talk to every NPC multiple times at different points in the game just to look for hidden bits of dialog, and replay the game multiple times to experience every possible scene. Now it's incredibly rare that I even finish a game, and a lot of that is just because shortly after I start one my mind starts drifting to one of the other ~200 games I have in my backlog until I eventually decide that my time is better spent playing something else. Even in the heyday of Gamestop I never lost focus like this, and I think the combination of just being older combined with an overwhelming number of options leads to me enjoying individual games a lot less.

When I was 18, I bought a cd player and my first CD. That was the only CD I had for months and I listened to it over and over and over and never got tired of it. A few years later, I bought one of those 50 CD changer stereos. Every slot had a CD in it ... and I was bored with every single song. I couldn't listen to a song all the way through before being bored with it. I suspect this phenomenon I experienced with the CDs is related to the phenomenon of being bored with video games. There's just so many to choose from now.

I just fired up the original God of War on ps2 and was treated to more gameplay mechanics from a polished experience than any modern game in two hours of play. It blows my mind how high quality games were back then.