Thoughts on the current generation of gamers

Borov

Borov

Just yer average gopnik
It seems that I am the only kid in my town to have (what I would consider) a deep love for games with good stories and great atmosphere.Whenever i try to convince someone of my age to play the First Fallout or maybe one of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, they seem to just shrug it off and never want to speak of it again.Even F:NV, a relatively modern game! Not even a glance...

So my question(s) is:
Is every 12-17 year old like that? Are we living in a time where young gamers just don`t give a crap about the games that started their favorite series? Are RPGs only there for the older audience who can appreciate good role playing and story telling?...

I leave the answer to you.
 
I will say, what I said about my brother in one of the threads.

He is still 10 years old, but right now he is already a lost cause the way I see it.

He loves Saints Row 4, he loves winning, he can't stand losing in any way, shape or form. When there is a possibility of losing, he watches the youtubers who play these games, so he won't lose himself. He also swears a lot, due to those idiots on the internet.

To top it all, if he doesn't have a phone/tablet/any device that can play any games he gets bored so easily that even during one hour car ride he has to be told stories, where he wins all the time.

Basically, an addict to computer and internet as much as it pains me to say it.

<Edit>

Also, trying to show him other games that are not like this does not work. I tried, but he loves shooting and destroying stuff more than a good storyline or characters.
 
Ediros said:
I will say, what I said about my brother in one of the threads.

He is still 10 years old, but right now he is already a lost cause the way I see it.

He loves Saints Row 4, he loves winning, he can't stand losing in any way, shape or form. When there is a possibility of losing, he watches the youtubers who play these games, so he won't lose himself. He also swears a lot, due to those idiots on the internet.

To top it all, if he doesn't have a phone/tablet/any device that can play any games he gets bored so easily that even during one hour car ride he has to be told stories, where he wins all the time.

Basically, an addict to computer and internet as much as it pains me to say it.

<Edit>

Also, trying to show him other games that are not like this does not work. I tried, but he loves shooting and destroying stuff more than a good storyline or characters.
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Hah! Your brother reminds me of my cousin :-D.Only hes 8.
 
Ediros said:
I will say, what I said about my brother in one of the threads.

He is still 10 years old, but right now he is already a lost cause the way I see it.

He loves Saints Row 4, he loves winning, he can't stand losing in any way, shape or form. When there is a possibility of losing, he watches the youtubers who play these games, so he won't lose himself. He also swears a lot, due to those idiots on the internet.

To top it all, if he doesn't have a phone/tablet/any device that can play any games he gets bored so easily that even during one hour car ride he has to be told stories, where he wins all the time.

Basically, an addict to computer and internet as much as it pains me to say it.

<Edit>

Also, trying to show him other games that are not like this does not work. I tried, but he loves shooting and destroying stuff more than a good storyline or characters.
Click to expand...

I want to say "oh, but he's only 10, still a kid and will grow up" but at the same time, these are the exact things I'm a bit worried about when I see today's kids. It will be interesting to see them grow up and see what comes of this constant need to be entertained, to be rewarded and get attention from the online world. Hell, I'm an adult who's shunned most social media and seen a lot of the negative behaviour the internet brings out in people. Still I've managed to become obsessed with checking Facebook many times each day, and continually waste hour watching complete shit on YouTube. Not to mention gaming waaay too much. And I clearly see what effects it has on me. I literally missed the days of my youth when I didn't have this constant feed of online interactivity, and when I enjoyed spending my times on other things than the internet and games. I can only feel sorry for kids growing up with all this shit constantly in their face.
 
People demanding more mature, well-written, thoughtful, and intellectually stimulating videogames are not being catered to outside of small, independent studios with small budgets. There are only a few exceptions to this that end up proving the rule.
 
Borov said:
It seems that I am the only kid in my town to have (what I would consider) a deep love for games with good stories and great atmosphere.Whenever i try to convince someone of my age to play the First Fallout or maybe one of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, they seem to just shrug it off and never want to speak of it again.Even F:NV, a relatively modern game! Not even a glance...
Click to expand...

Is every 12-17 year old like that?
Click to expand...

Probably most 12-16 year olds. Who else would buy call of duty year after year?

Are we living in a time where young gamers just don`t give a crap about the games that started their favorite series?
Click to expand...

Yes. They're kids, they just want to shoot shit. When I was that age all I played was Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer with my friends.

Are RPGs only there for the older audience who can appreciate good role playing and story telling?...
Click to expand...

True RPG's, yes. Bethesda "RPG's", no.
 
Some sources say, the average age of the gamer is 31 years. It's easy to say, look, damn kidz killing gaming for us! But I don't think that is actually the case.
 
Yeah I have friends who have been gaming all their lives and used to play classic great games back in the day and love them yet now they too get dazzled by the latest shiniest toy splurged out by the triple-A industry (They're the age of 26, like me). I'd say that despite their history with gaming and the good games they've played they're still "casual gamers". They don't really 'care' about gaming in any way, they just play the games cause they fun. And over time what is 'fun' to them has changed. I've seen them sell and buy consoles on a whim, abandon steam accounts they have a dozen games on, forget their passwords and go "fuck it" and just create a new one to start all over again. They don't really long for the good old days but at the same time they enjoy the old games cause they found them entertaining but aren't exactly clamouring for more of it.

They don't care about scandals, they don't care if a series steers off course, they don't care if a company practices shitty behaviour. All they really care about is having fun. Gaming is supposed to just be fun. Entertaining. Nothing else. Just keep their minds occupied for a while until they put it down and go and other things that are cool. Like clubbing or working on attaining alcoholism.

They don't condone the shitty things that happen either. They just don't care. True neutral. Just give 'em a game that can grab their attention for long enough and they're content. There are times when I envy that.
 
I believe that the first time I set my eyes on fallout was when I was about 8 years old. The game intimidated me in a lot of ways and the music scared the living crap out of me (didn't get past the entrance) . Fast foward 2 years later I tried playing it again. Made a lot more progress this time, mostly due to my uncle helping me with certain quests and areas. Reached necropolis, shitted my pants because of the freaky soundtrack and didn't play it for awhile. Got back, moved on, left necropolis without knowing i doomed it by not repairing the water pump. Didn't finish the game back then because I remember the computer I was playing on being changes for a better one. Finally finished it when I was 12.

Even tho i barely knew what the hell was going on back then, I had a lot of fun playing it. When i got a grasp on the story, I was astounded. Couldn't believe how awesome it was.

My point with this story is that i grew up mostly on RPGs and a few exceptions. I think that it moulded my of my opinion of games and that's the reason my tastes are different than that of my peers.

Also I just wanted to share my story just for the hell of it :-).
 
I consider myself of a dinosaur in today's current market.
I'm 21 now and up until the age of say 14/15, I would say I fit the OP#s description of what the current generation of gamer's are like.

I still like mindless shit, hell, I enjoy BMXXX because it is just a really dumb and completely offensive game that I can spend hour ripping apart.
But I do long for the days of the 90's where no one cared about anything except entertainment.
Am I sick of the fact that everything needs to be diversed and how anything else is regressive?
Yes.
I'm also sick of seeing overblown Holywood style games with a built white man with a gun.

If someone looks at the type of games I play, you'll find games which also don't care about either of these things, their focus is the game and how it is presented. Not how it's presented with Gameplay taking a step back.

About a month ago I picked up I have no mouth and I must scream, I enjoyed how dark and gloomy it all is and how there is no way to win.
Maybe I just long for everything to be dark and depressing.

So yeah, I consider myself a dinosaur because nowadays, games just aren't at that stage where they should be.
They were going somewhere good at the end of the last decade, now they've derailed a bit and fucked off somewhere.

At least in terms of most games, some games actually are where they should be (Witcher 3 for example).
 
Many games have gotten dumber and more violent. It is tragic and stupid.

Fallout 4 is much more violent and thoughtless than New Vegas or the originals. In New Vegas you can solve many major problems with Speech and negotiation, and NV and the originals were about interacting with people. Fallout 4 is not about any of this. It's about FPS. It is impossible to be a pacifist in Fallout 4, while it is possible in the other games.

This is how AAA studios are making games. Meanwhile, people who want mature role playing games with good writing are only finding them from very small independent studios.
 
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Mr Fish said:
Yeah I have friends who have been gaming all their lives and used to play classic great games back in the day and love them yet now they too get dazzled by the latest shiniest toy splurged out by the triple-A industry (They're the age of 26, like me). I'd say that despite their history with gaming and the good games they've played they're still "casual gamers". They don't really 'care' about gaming in any way, they just play the games cause they fun. And over time what is 'fun' to them has changed. I've seen them sell and buy consoles on a whim, abandon steam accounts they have a dozen games on, forget their passwords and go "fuck it" and just create a new one to start all over again. They don't really long for the good old days but at the same time they enjoy the old games cause they found them entertaining but aren't exactly clamouring for more of it.

They don't care about scandals, they don't care if a series steers off course, they don't care if a company practices shitty behaviour. All they really care about is having fun. Gaming is supposed to just be fun. Entertaining. Nothing else. Just keep their minds occupied for a while until they put it down and go and other things that are cool. Like clubbing or working on attaining alcoholism.

They don't condone the shitty things that happen either. They just don't care. True neutral. Just give 'em a game that can grab their attention for long enough and they're content. There are times when I envy that.
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Well, if we are fair, even during the hight of Interplay we had games like Fallout 1 and 2, and you had games like Diablo, which aimed at a much wider audience. And there was a very similar discussion. Was Diablo a true RPG? Isn't it just dumbed down action? Millions of flies can't be wrong! Eat shit and so on and so on. Wile some of the criticism was true, a lot of it was also drama.
The big difference, and the one that really counts, is that Diablo and Fallout have been seperate games. It is a relatively modern thing to take known names and franchises and to turn them upside down just for the money you can squeze out of it. And if we are honest, Beth hasn't bought Fallout beacuse all of them working on it are such incredible super nerdy fans of the franchise. Even if you love F3 and F4 you can't believe in that marketing hype if you're a sane person. Even in the 90s we had our fare share of schlock, action oriented cash grabs and mindless fun. Hell! I enjoyed a lot of it too! But at least they made new games. They didn't destroyed established franchises just for money.
 
I am just saying ... I don't see my self as too different to the average gamer. Infact, I would call my self casual. And I don't think that is really something bad. I have yet to see someone who's never ever doing SOME activity to dull his mind. For many people, this happens to be games. For others it might be comic books, a certain TV series, music or what ever. I mean if you always and constantly doing something that is incredibly philosophical or challanging ... I imagine you would get crazy at some point.
 
Crni Vuk said:
I am just saying ... I don't see my self as too different to the average gamer. Infact, I would call my self casual. And I don't think that is really something bad. I have yet to see someone who's never ever doing SOME activity to dull his mind. For many people, this happens to be games. For others it might be comic books, a certain TV series, music or what ever. I mean if you always and constantly doing something that is incredibly philosophical or challanging ... I imagine you would get crazy at some point.
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Oh no I do it too with some things. Just enjoy them for the sake of dulling my mind for a while and not going indepth about it at all. I'm not making a moral stance or grand commentary on the gaming audience or anything about it. I'm just going into detail about a certain specific group of people I personally know who are the age of 26 and feed into the triple-a market that some assume only "the kiddies" like. Basically, I agree with your post about average age of gamer being 31 so it ain't about the kiddies and gave an example to prove your point. That's all.
 
I find that younger gamer's are over stimulated with all the hopped up graphics and immediate gratification new games produce for them. Otherwise we would not have seen games like "idlers" become so popular.

Many of the older gamer's grew up having to learn and think their way out of logic puzzles and relied mostly on their imagination on filling in the unspoken blanks of a game. Which often yielded better results overall simply because the human imagination is a powerful tool.

But now a majority of games are focused on railroading players through its content as efficently as possible to ensure everyone enjoys the "same experience". The problem is older games hate that to a rather extreme degree. If I lacked the ability to explore and seek out things in games like Space Quest I would have found the game rather dull and pointless. But that particular game forced players to consider their actions in even the most mundane and silly fashions.

Jump to today, and you sadly only have a couple of options "if that" to progress forward in a game, while older games did follow a linear path. Finding the path forward was the challenge, were today the path is clearly spelled out to even the most simple minded of players.

I know I don't speak for everyone one of us, but I strongly feel taking out the requirement to actually think while playing a game has done an immense amount of damage to the art.
 
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