Can we talk about what we love of games, instead of what we hate about them now?

[kitsunefather]

Personally, I'm thrilled we're at the point technologically that it doesn't take much for studios to create games where gameplay and story are not at odds, and both can be used to inform or enhance the other. Until Dawn is an example, though it is something of a QTE factory, but Soma is another good example (yes I'm a horror fan).

 

[EHKOS]

I remember going over to my uncles house and playing GTA for the first time. I'd been restricted to platformers and E games due to my age, but it blew me away. How much you could do, how expansive the world was. I look back and laugh at how simple and small it is now, but it was magical.

I love the satisfaction in an FPS when your gun is smoking, you're injured, but the room is clear, the dust has settled and you came out on top. WHEW! Now lemme just grab that healthpack annnnd...bring 'em on.

I love open-world sandbox games, and how you can shape your character to who you want to be and not who you really are. I like how I'm able to look cooler, become more capable, and be more powerful, in worlds that are more interesting.

I like how I've been able to jump across buildings and drift around cites, and do all the other crazy shit we do, while not risking any danger to ourselves at all.

And when we were a bit too young, and the checkpoints were so much further away, and we finally managed to get through a level and progress the story after a week.

All the exploring and wonderment, wondering what I'll find in the next treasure chest. I've visited so many awesome places and impossible landscapes, seen underwater cities and floating ones too!

And come Nov. 10, we get to do it again!

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I can see 40K realised in glorious 1080p (or more if I had a better monitor) and I don't even have to paint the little bastards to do it.

The Bethesda FPRPGs let me explore other worlds.

CIV 4 lets me play out my world conquering megalomaniac fantasies.

 

[Something Amyss]

Did that Brit leave between April and July of this year? That's when the Alexa rankings show a sudden drop in traffic equal to over 2500 ranking points.

No, but he doesn't have to for it to work against your point.

Further, the site's peak on your own chart was around the time of some of the massively hostile negative moments. I fail to see how any of this would help your case. Yes, you have an argument with Inu-Kun that the site is "dying," but the rest? I don't know how you can get there from here.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

At best, you'll get both.
There's still lots of valid criticisms to be made, and if I ever criticize games, it's because I love them, and I want to see them grow, and become more interesting.

The thing is, it's a lot easier to be upset about something. It's like a drug in more or less every sense of the word. More over, it's easier to have a conversation about what you dislike because it's easier for people to disagree, and thus an actual conversation happens instead of agreeing, and running out of steam quickly. It's easier to be passionate about what you're against.
I reckon it's just human nature.

It's weird talking about what I like. I'm a pretty introverted sort that likes to keep things under my hat. It's a little shocking when people like what I like, mostly because I like more obscure stuff. It's weird talking about it because people, and I can't figure out why.

But, hey, if you want to talk about what you love about gaming, by all means, make the threads, and see what happens. Maybe you can spark something?

 

[Aetrion]

When it comes to constructive criticism unfortunately it's usually a lot more efficient to point out areas for improvement than simply listing what was good. Especially with a medium as complex as games you can't even assume that listing the positives properly identifies what could be done better by omission.

 

[1981]

I love how I can survive for years and then die to a pack of enraged bunnies because I like pierogi.

 

[Tuxedoman]

I -love- attention to the small details in games. I recently started to play GTA 5 and am blown away by all the little things that Rockstar added to the game for no reason other than to add flavour. Things like the car radios inside the car showing you what channel you're on, or the believable change in sounds when you swap from third to first person gameplay. Things like that are catnip for me, and more often than not will make a game stand out above the rest despite some other flaws.

For me, I play games for immersion and enjoyment rather than for competition. So anything like that peaks my interest regardless of whatever genre the game is from.

 

[Dango]

Spoiler: A very relevant comic

Anyway, since I just finished a League match, I do think it's very gratifying in competitive games to outsmart opponents.

 

[WonkyWarmaiden]

I've had some of my favorite gaming experiences in Team Fortress 2. Guarding or stealing the intelligence, capturing points and just working with other people to form a cohesive team that the opposing players can barely get past.

 

[G00N3R7883]

The main two things that I like most about games are:

- Fantastic stories. I don't think the videogame industry gets the credit it deserves as a storytelling medium. I can name loads of games that have great stories - Witcher, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, NWN, Deus Ex HR, Tomb Raider, Bioshock, Max Payne, Shadowrun, Wolfenstein ... I could be here all day. Especially when the player has the ability to make choices that influence how the story plays out. A film or a book will be the same every time, and sometimes the viewer/reader will think "that's stupid, that character wouldn't have done that". In a game, the player can experience their own version of the story.

- Tactical combat systems. I don't just mean turn based like Xcom or Shadowrun (although recently I've been really enjoying that style). I just mean anything where my character has multiple weapons/abilities/spells/gadgets and I'm fighting a variety of enemies with different abilities, and then I need to figure out which tactic will work best against each enemy. Basically, I like games that make me think.

 

[Evonisia]

I've plenty fantastic memories from the original FarCry, one example being when I overcame some heinous challenge (which was the Helicopter boss fight on the sinking boat) after many failures. Completing hard modes of games, or playing XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Dark Souls serve to try and recapture that excitement I get at overcoming such hideousness.

But mostly, FarCry was the trigger that got me invested in to the world buildings games can do. I very much doubt that I would have gotten so in to some of my favourites games or game franchises[footnote]Halo, Gears of War, ZombiU, Oblivion, BioShock 1, the various different takes of Silent Hill, among others.[/footnote] if I hadn't become obsessed with the lore, the cutscenes and the simple visual delight of that mutant-riddled cheesy world. I'm quite willing to forgive a lot of game's faults if I can at least get lost in it.

 

[Something Amyss]

What is "the rest"?

You claimed this site "dying" as a counter to people preferring to discuss negative things.

The problem is that most people find talking about bad things more interesting than good things (for example the AVGN had it's career made from it).

If that were true this forum would be booming, not dying.

If that was true, and we used your Alexa metric, then the site was at its peak during the height of the negativity of the last year, and tapered off as it did. Your evidence makes the exact opposite case: that ye site boomed when there was a huge storm of toxicity and "died" as it died down.

Or are you pretending you never said that now, and that you only ever argued the site was dying?

You have "evidence" that doesn't support the facts. Might want to hold off on the "wah wah," there.

I reckon it's just human nature.

It's evolution. Our nature changes, but we're wired to notice problems. Hell, we're even wired to false positives because being wrong about a problem is less disadvantageous than being wrong about there not being one.

 

[Halla Burrica]

There are a lot of things I love a lot about video games, and if we're be talking positive memories from video games, I have enough to fill a book (even though I've only really played games since between 2011-2012). My favorite of those memories are the surprises. I was in awe when in Half-Life 2 I pressed the monitor switch on Nova Prospekt and discovered the G-man, casting the whole experience in an entirely new light. I loved the emotional and moral weight that was added to the story in Bastion when I found out what had led to the Calamity to begin with. I greatly appreciated Alice: Madness Returns when I discovered that the fantastic visuals in the game were not just beautiful surrealism, but had political subtext about the Victorian Age in several aspects, most curiosly how it influenced Japan and China (seriously, after the level with the Caterpillar, I looked up and learned a great deal). The Mass Effect series is an incredible one, but I was never so invested as when I came to understand just who and what the squadmates in Mass Effect 2 were and what their deal was (which is great because that game is almost entirely character-focused).

There are many other things I like, such as the sense of power that comes with skillfully navigating every obstacle in Half-Life 2 or perfectly positioning my troops and defeating the other team despite the other team having a way bigger army in Fire Emblem, or the feeling of accomplishment when successfully sneaking through an entire platoon of soldiers without them even suspecting you were there in Metal Gear Solid.

 

[Drathnoxis]

If that were true this forum would be booming, not dying.

Whether people prefer positivity or negativity has nothing to do with the health of this forum. Especially when you consider that much of the traffic to the site and the forums came from a Brit who takes the piss out of popular video games in animated form. Especially when it was booming.

Did that Brit leave between April and July of this year? That's when the Alexa rankings show a sudden drop in traffic equal to over 2500 ranking points.

Actually, forum activity has been dropping since around July 2011. This coincides with the time that the Escapist began uploading Zero Punctuation to Youtube.

Spoiler: Numbers from a thread I made a while back.

For a while now it's seemed to me that the site has much lower activity than when I first joined, so I decided to gather some numbers to see if this was actually the case, and whether Gamergate was the cause.

I used Wayback Machine [http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/] and found archives that were 1 week apart. Then, I calculated how many new threads and posts were made in that week.

Spoiler: The Numbers

Pre Gamergate

March 2009
Gaming discussion
370 new threads
15457 new posts

Off Topic
496 new threads
22966 new posts


March 2010
Gaming Discussion
471 new threads
16865 new posts

Off Topic
468 new threads
19247 new posts

July 2011
Gaming Discussion
549 new threads
18154 new posts

Off Topic
465 new threads
27292 new posts

May 2012
Gaming Discussion
254 new threads
8359 new posts

Off Topic
213 new threads
11075 new posts

Jun 2013
Gaming Discussion
181 new threads
6954 new posts

Off Topic
73 new threads
3618 new posts

March 2014
Gaming Discussion
98 new threads
2863 new posts

Off Topic
51 new threads
1850 new posts

July 2014
Gaming Discussion
21 new threads
4648 new posts

Off Topic
13 new threads
2170 new posts


Post Gamergate
There was only 1 set of archives a week apart after August 2014

March 2015
Gaming discussion
62 new threads
1953 new posts

Off Topic
67 new threads
2213 new posts

Spoiler: Sources

So as you can see, the forum traffic took a enormous hit in 2012 and has been dropping ever since. It seems Gamergate has not really had too much of an impact on The forum activity considering how low it was before Gamergate even began.
If we compare the high point of July 2011 to the low point of March 2015 we see:

Gaming Discussion
Topic creation is down 89%
New posts are down 89%

Off Topic
Topic creation is down 85%
New posts are down 92%

So the forums are a shadow of their former selves, now let's talk about why. What do you think caused this? How do you feel about the current state of the forums? How much longer are you planning to remain on these forums yourself? EDIT: because some users seem to be unclear on the issue, these are simply questions to spark discussion. You aren't required to answer them if you have nothing to say in response.

Edit: Please don't make this a discussion of Gamergate. This discussion should primarily be focused on The Escapist itself.

We can see that Zero Punctuation is still very popular by the numbers on Youtube.
From his recent Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain review:
Views on Youtube: 395,535
Comments on Youtube: 1355
Comments on the Escapist: 69

So taking all that into consideration I would say that the decline of the site is due mainly to the fact that Zero Punctuation was the main draw to the site and it's now easier to watch on Youtube. Without people coming to the site to watch Zero Punctuation, they simply don't come at all. The negativity of the forums don't enter into it.

 

[retsupurae yahtsee]

I love the imagination of games like those made Nintendo, Capcom, Atlus, Platinum, Treasure, Edmund Macmullen and Devolver; the fact that I can play 20 to 30 year old games like Bionic Commando, Mario World, Shin Megami Tensei, Crystalis, Earthbound, the old Donkey Kong Country games, Contra 3. Ducktales, Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry, Wing Commander, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Gateway, Spellcasting, Crah Bandicoot and Recca and have almost as much fun as I did in the old days; services like ROMs, GOG, PSN, Virtual Console and Steam that allow me to play those old games; watching Let's Plays of terrible games and laughing at them; the prevalence of awesome games on the Wii and WiiU like Metroid Prime Trilogy, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2, Bayonetta 2, Little King's Story, Mother 1 and 2, Wonderful 101, Rayman Origins and Legends, many Mario games and a few Zelda games; interesting experiments like Static, Blind Doom, Passage, the versions of Tetris which become invisible at the end, etc.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

There are myriad reasons I enjoy games. Part of it comes from discovering things, decent storylines, seeing a different world or viewpoint. I can't rightly nail down exactly what makes me enjoy a game. I do know that I don't enjoy bashing games or devs, the only thing negative I usually have to say about a game is if its broken or poorly optimized.
I stay far away from negativity unless I've got something constructive to say.

 

[Banana Cannon]

Sorry I've been away for a few days, I had tasks to deal with IRL and a few skills to level up in Skyrim,& a few musings about the relationship between Talos, Lorkhan & that tentacled book hoarder Hermaeus Mora.(Yeah, lore really gets me going) I apologise that I myself am not too active a forum poster, but I just wished to provide some platform which draws us to the medium we love.

I'm glad to see that this subject has gotten so many great responses, & the diversity of what buzz people get out of games is staggering, when its provided to everyone like this.

I also found it rather amusing that some individual/ (maybe) countered my negative stance towards negativity with more negativity. There's a particular term for this, there has to be!

Also, I must ask, has anyone watched Sora's Epic Speech from No Game No Life?