Have your gaming tastes changed as you've aged?

[Ita Bear]

Hello folks,

Not sure if this is the appropriate area for this topic but thought it may be worth discussion. I ask because I have noticed my own tastes change recently. Overall I feel I'm less interested in computer games as I get older and other, perhaps more useful, hobbies take my time instead. I could wax lyrical about the myriad ways I believe the computer game industry has been ruined (loot boxes, "battle passes", e-sports, Twitch/Youtube streamers, Steam, Early Access, reddit, road-maps, 'release-now-and-patch-it-later-itis,' and those three dreaded letters D-L-C just off the top of my head... back in my day we had expansion packs and they were worth the money ) and this has spurred me to try some other things I might never have before.

I recently played Firewatch and really enjoyed the simplistic adventure, wandering around in a beautiful landscape. It's really interested me in further "walking simulators." I've always been really turned off by CRPGs, but I've played Divinity II: Original Sin and Expeditions: Rome lately and enjoyed them both. I have a back-log going on three decades old - I'd love to play the original Doom and Quake games, dive into the original Fallout games as well as finally get round to completing Caesar III, Knights and Merchants, Sudden Strike and Theme Hospital. Modern, explosive games bore me within minutes, but these older games can hook me for hours. I guess they really don't make them how they used to.

What do folk around think?

Kind regards,
Ita Bear

 

[sherbz]

Mine have changed too. I used to go all in for triple A releases. Now i hardly ever buy any. And the games i do play tend to be old favourites. I do have a soft spot for certain indie titles. They are like games i used to play when growing up. With the emphasis being on fun and good game design. Not season passes, loot boxes and how much cash can i make out of my consumer.

That said, there are games in your list that do have good modern implementations. Two point hospital is better than theme hospital IMO. Although the original still retains its charm. Wasteland 3 is also a good RPG in the vein of the original fallout series. I mostly play roguelikes these days. Most games are over in an hour or so. So they fit better into my lifestyle. The best of these are (in no particular order): Slay the spire, Darkest dungeon, FTL, Dungeon of the endless, For the King. Maybe worth checking some of those out if you have not already tried them.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I still play boardgames and TTRPGs like I did 40+ years ago. My 1st PC games were Civ 1 and Neverwinter Nights and I still like strategy games and RPGs.

 

[Quintillus]

I don't think my gaming tastes have fundamentally changed. The specific games I play have (in some cases) changed. But fundamentally, strategy is still my staple, with a good side dish of simulator/management/builder, and a snack of something fast-paced, often FPS based, albeit less frequently than back in the day. Sometimes, the games themselves are even the same, such as Civ3 and Railroad Tycoon II, but there are plenty of decent or outright good new strategy/builder/etc. games, if also some disappointments. Factorio and Banished being a couple of 2010s games that were right up my alley and didn't exist 20 years ago.

It's true that many of the items on your list - loot boxes, season passes, e-sports, streaming, to some extent Reddit, and some aspects of DLC - are things I ignore (and in the case of loot boxes, disdain). But there's also a huge variety of games nowadays, so in many ways it's more possible to find the games I want these days - they often exist, I just have to find them, which is better than them not existing at all.

What has perhaps changed is that I have both more hobbies and more games to choose from, so I don't play any games as exclusively as I played Civ back in the day. I'm also less likely to play a game through to the official victory condition if all challenge has already been defeated. But what I like in games is pretty much the same as it was five years before I joined CivFanatics.

I do recommend playing the original DOOM. I got around to that recently, and it definitely stands the test of time. Well, maybe not in the graphics department, but at least in gameplay, and those pixelated monsters still do manage to deliver a scare as well as the monsters in any more modern shooter I've played. Is it absolutely better than Doom 2016? I can't tell you; I'll probably get around to playing that one around 2037. But it is good.

Also +1 for Darkest Dungeon. The voice acting alone is worth the price of admission, but the mechanics are great, too.

 

[teccuk]

A little.

It's still 4x and economic/management / driving sims. If anything as I have less time even more so focused on these key genres. Have not played an RPG in years. RTS games i find too frantic now.

I do irregular forays into 'proper games' and just get very confused at anything that requires 3d movement. Which is quite common I think. Press the wrong button and end up jumping off of cliffs, can't figure out how to open doors, normal old people problems lol.