30 year old gamers feeling disenfranchised?

[Darks63]

I dont feel disenfranchised really the only thing about gaming today i dislike vs gaming from when i was younger is there seems to be less developers of game and more big studios that tend to put out only money making type games and stray away from trying new and interesting things.

that and the fact that every new version of windows makes playing classics from my earlier days hard to impossible to play and the decline of my hand eye coordination.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I'm 30 been gaming since about 1984-5 and I'm loving the games we have at the moment. I'm playing Arkham City and it's great, looking forward to Diablo 3 aswell.

I just finished Grimrock and got all the achievements.

I think there is plenty for older gamers, if anything they are starting to make more mature games than ever.

 

[squid5580]

The glory days of the 90s. Okay I'm not thirty yet, but sheesh, quit sounding like there won't ever be anything as good. Hell, my formative gaming years were in the 90s (I started young) and I don't even think they're that good, and in theory I should be the most nostalgic for them.

Well I am 36 and I am playing the types of games I dreamed about playing in the 90's (and 80s).

 

[Casey Bowen]

I'm 40 and go back to PONG.

I still game on pretty much a daily basis. That being said I don't buy as many games as before. Not always because they're just not great -- but because I'm a family man and that takes up a lot of time.... and that is time I wouldn't trade for playing games because my wife and daughter mean a lot more to me than the gaming over the decades.

So with buying fewer games I do have to be pickier about what I get. But with backlog of titles, Borderlands 2 and Xcom Enemy Unknown this year I should be well set.

 

[surg3n]

The glory days of the 90s. Okay I'm not thirty yet, but sheesh, quit sounding like there won't ever be anything as good. Hell, my formative gaming years were in the 90s (I started young) and I don't even think they're that good, and in theory I should be the most nostalgic for them.

Well I am 36 and I am playing the types of games I dreamed about playing in the 90's (and 80s).

Good point. If I remember the lofty ideas I had as a kid about what games might be like in the future, I don't think I imagined they'd be as good as they are today, esp games like Fallout3... as a kid growing up in the 80's, watching those survival movies, end of the world stuff, well Fallout3 would have blown my mind. Maybe us oldbies are a bit too jaded sometimes to remember that. I remember spending a long time wondering how awesome virtual reality will be... well I bought a VR headset, and it sucks - what we do have are engaging worlds to explore and experience, we should probably be more glad about the Mass Effect games, and GTA, elder scrolls etc etc.

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

I'm not a huge PC gamer but other than that i fit your critera. Games are sort of a mixed bag for me right now. i'm seeing some really awsome stuff in gaming. Assassin's creed's climb anywhere mechanics and intresting story system, saints row over the top antics, skyrim's huge detalied world to explore. But i'm also seeing alot of lazy and greedy shit pulling the industry down. Assassin's creed seems to be milking the series for as long as it can get away with it, saints row is starting to nickle and dime you for add ons, and skyrim while fun as hell is much shorter than the previous elder scroll games.

Right now games have the potential to be more awesome than ever but game companies are becoming greedy evil shits and they're sucking all the fun out of games. and what i'm hearing about upcoming systems makes me think i'm likely not going to be a gamer for much longer. Digital only games that cost as much as physical games, cell phone like subscription plans for consoles.

Even right now some of the shit game companies are pulling is making me want to game less and less. i still do enjoy mainstream games but i don't know for how much longer. Ninja Gaiden 3 was a joke, Mass Effect 3 appeartnly has a bad ending (haven't played it yet), Sillent hill isn't scary anymore. All games have to have some kind of multiplayer or they aren't made.

I think...I hope what i'll see is more indie studios embracing previous gen game engines and using them to make cheaper but fun games that i can enjoy. I'm seeing promise in the Kickstarter fund raiser games like Shadowrun Returns but its too early to call.

I don't want to give up on games. they're still fun but the corperations have become too greedy. somthings gotta give. either we find a way to make less expenisve but more unique games or i give up and actually do somthing constructive with my free time.

 

[Tallim]

34 here and I've been playing games regularly since ugh I was about 5 or 6. I have no real problem with games at the moment except with how generic everything has become. Even the exceptional games by today's standards are on par with mediocre-good games from the 90s. Obviously I'm talking about design, writing and mechanics there rather than visuals.

Mid to late 90s was a crucible of gaming, no one really knew how to tap into a large market and gaming studios were making whatever they could come up with which lead to some truly unique and wonderful gaming experiences. Something that is lacking in the industry at the moment.

Even going back to extremely old games you get a bevy of cleverly crafted experiences which are full of strong core principles. I still play some C64 games and enjoy them far more than a lot of AAA titles at the moment.

I think the main problem amongst PC gamers who have been gaming for so long is that a lot of fantastic games belonged to genres that are no longer marketed that often any more and there is little innovation in modern incarnations of genres that are common.

This is why I LOVE the explosion of the indie scene right now. Those people are making games how studios used to make games, pouring their heart and soul into a game that they want to make and free to experiment with mechanics and ideas that the "industry leaders" won't touch.

Am I disenfranchised? Not really. I can still find games that are worth my time but having played games for so long I have a huge catalogue of experiences to compare any modern releases to and so I am much more discerning about what I invest my time and money in.

 

[mrpropal]

31, I used to be a PC gamer, then I moved to the PS3.

I blame the Industry of making games that are too easy to beat, and too shallow in the art department. In need of a scapegoat for that, I'm almost becoming anti-American (I know). Yet I believe we could use a different gaming culture. For instance, one where in difficulty modes "Easy" means easy and "Insane" means INSANE.

I hate tutorials and crosshairs. Most HUDs take away the immersion more than they help. They should always be an option.

The company that best represent me, in this gen, are FROM Software, for the Souls and Armored Core series.

What I miss most is a space combat/trade simulator, or that underdog gem that is HardWar.

I'm starting to think there is something wrong with me though. So things are fine.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

so tell me if you have tried these. if yes i can recommend you more adventure games.

Dreamfall, Kings Quest, Police Quest and Gabriel Knight are ringing my bell but i have to admit i haven`t played these games(maybe 1 Kings Quest title about a jester but that`s ages ago).

It seems that i have to go back to pc for adventure fun since Hector looks great und deutsch ist kein Problem. Die Edna-titel sind mir schon`mal im örtlichen Kaufhaus aufgefallen. They look nice too.
Thanks for the list, most of the games should be able to run on this pc. I`ll check some of the titles and please recommend more.

 

[loc978]

31, and I go back to the Atari 2600 (I got a lot of hand-me-downs. No Atari until the NES was big, no NES until the SNES was about to come out. That changed in 1997. Job, car, disposable income... PC).

In essence, I've been a niche audience all my life, and an offshoot of one of my hobbies got huge when the original XBox got popular. I'm still in the same ol' niche, yet somehow I'm lumped in with people who would willingly buy a hardware product from Microsoft. The geek in me simply scratches his head and returns to waiting on small-time development. Also, donates to projects that are worthwhile.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I'm not quite 30, but I'm close enough, and I'm plenty experienced with what the market has put out pretty much from around its inception to present day (not EVERYTHING, but a rather large sampling of everything).

Right now, the AAA industry is mostly a dead-end market for me. It's full of repeats, rehashes, and franchises whose design has been (mostly) treading the same ground for about the last 5 years or so.

If there is anything I have learned in that time, it's to never build expectations for fucking anything. Eventually, your beloved game series or company will reach the plateau of what they can actually deliver.

Oh, and don't bother saying anything about it or start making comparisons. You'll be marginalized as "nostalgic" by ignorant trolls and assholes who cannot grasp "context".

For now, I'm just enjoying the small clusters of good niche titles that come out of the indie scene. The good news, is that our generation is in a position to actually produce the sorts of games we like on our own. Computer programming has progressed to the point where it's both very powerful AND easy to learn.

And I've seen the results of that. For example: Sword of the Stars. Legend of Grimrock. Xenonauts.
Each one of those is a return to quality classic gameplay but each one IMPROVES on the mechanics of its spiritual predecessor in some manner.

 

[George_Harvey_Bone]

I don't know about you, but I am. There's only a few relatively obscure games I'm really looking forward to, PlanetSide 2 being the biggie. Right now, I have been playing nothing but CoD Black Ops - Zombies for 5 months, around the time I just stopped playing SkyRim without even both to finish. No exaggeration. There are a total of 7 games on my steam account.

So here's is who I want to here from. If you're 30, and you started out with the children's toys, the consoles, and as you grew up- you moved onto PC and witnessed the glory days of the mid 90's; I want to hear from you.

If you're 30, and you did nothing but put product in your hair and chase tail from 14-25 and only recently bought an xbox360 because you remembered nintendo being fun as a kid- you're not like me- but i'll hear from you anyway.

Tell how much attention is being paid to you and what you want? How happy are you with the current crop of games? What do you miss? etc. I know there's a handful of you who post regularly.

I actually went the other way - ZX Spectrum > Amiga > PC > Xbox 360. The last game I played on something with a keyboard was Oblivion.

The main reason was that was around the time I went from being a systems admin to a developer. I spend all day buried in code and interoperability problems, so the last thing I want to do when I get home is make stuff work.

It's probably a bit perverse, or maybe heretical, but I use nothing but UNIX for work and nothing but Microsoft at home nowadays.

You seem to be irritated that consoles have led to stagnation and dumbing down of computer games, and you might be right to a degree; however, I think it's more to do with the fact that the gaming industry has simply "matured". And I mean that in the capitalist sense - in the same way that the music and film industries "matured" in the 80's.

Fighting it is a bit like like micturating in the wind though. My own way of dealing with it is the same as with music and film - look to the independents and those rare moments of genius that occasionaly survive big business's obsession with trite, witless formulas.

But you should probably disregard my post - it's coming from someone in his mid-thirties who still puts product in his hair and chases tail...

 

[Brad Calkins]

Well, I'm only 18, but I do feel that games have lost something since the N64 days, that's not to say that new games are are always bad, there certainly have been a few good ones recently, but there are a few mistakes they make, the Mirror's Edge mistake, where the developers are so focused on being original they forget to do anything well, the Tom Clancey, where they forget that for a game to be fun, they have to take artistic license with reality and the Fable 3 problem, where they overemphasize graphics at the expense of everything else.