Quote: Original post by RealMarkP
I don't know if I will ever get back into games as a serious gamer. I bought a Wii and some games a year ago but it seldom sees use. Only when friends come over we have a Guitar hero jam session or something.

On the other hand, I do have a game engine built and I am making a game with a friend. There is no shortage of game ideas here.

Yeah that's the good thing with the Wii I guess is that's it gotten people interested in games again?
Anyways, if you ever truly liked playing games you are probably just going through a phase happens to all of us due to life circumstances,etc.
In my case for example I have time commitments school,work,etc that take priority so it's not like I can spend much time playing games in the first place. Every now and then there will be a game like KOTR that is so good and just drags you in that I'll drop everything else to play the game but it is very rare.
Then again there are people like couple of my computer friends that even though they have been into computers for years I never see them play games at all and they spend all their free time just watching movies or whatever.
Then again I have other friends that are the first people that get any new game that comes out and are the first to complete it and are kill it since they finish in a week what takes me weeks to months to complete [lol]

p.s. I'm currently playing Fallout3 thanks to circuitycity going out of business and it's got one of the best opening sequences of any game since HL1 IMO!
I'm out of the bunker now but keep getting killed so I'm quickly losing interest though:(


[Edited by - daviangel on February 27, 2009 7:05:59 PM]

Playing games and programming games is quite different to begin with, so I wouldn't worry too much. As for me, I am worried about playing too many games instead of programming them! :-D There haven't been many PC games that piqued my interest lately (though I liked Sins and am looking forward to buying Fallout 3 once the price drops a bit), but having bought a PS3 I found a number of games on that platform worthwhile (Uncharted, GTA4, Valkyrian Chronicles, Assassin's Creed, Overlord, even though most of these are not PS3-exclusive).

You might also be experiencing something like innovation being hard to come by hence you are losing interest after seeing the same old again. Although World of Goo looked pretty interesting when I saw it on a friend's laptop, there aren't many such games on store shelves these days.

Quote: Original post by BeanDog
Nope, that's normal. That happened to me about 10 years ago. I've bought maybe 8 games since (though I've played tons of demos). Making games is much more interesting.

Yup, same here. Playing games is not the same anymore as it was back when I was a kid. I played for fun then, exploring areas, secrets, best items, getting to the next level, beating that high score. Right now, whenever I play a game, I subconsciously analyze the game from every angle, how they did the visual effects, the AI, the mechanics, the level design, the art direction, the execution of the script, the camera, and the control, and so on.

So playing demos has been sufficient to judge the technical merit of these games, or to a certain extent, by simply watching videos on YouTube. Very few new games intrigue me. If it does, then usually there's something in that game that I want to look at where the videos or demos don't show it.

Quote: Original post by RealMarkP
Maybe I'm just getting old. Soon I'll be yelling at kids to get off my lawn!

Everything ok.You become smarter,games-more casual (read: stupid).

Quote: Original post by alnite

Quote: Original post by BeanDog
Nope, that's normal. That happened to me about 10 years ago. I've bought maybe 8 games since (though I've played tons of demos). Making games is much more interesting.

Yup, same here. Playing games is not the same anymore as it was back when I was a kid. I played for fun then, exploring areas, secrets, best items, getting to the next level, beating that high score. Right now, whenever I play a game, I subconsciously analyze the game from every angle, how they did the visual effects, the AI, the mechanics, the level design, the art direction, the execution of the script, the camera, and the control, and so on.

So playing demos has been sufficient to judge the technical merit of these games, or to a certain extent, by simply watching videos on YouTube. Very few new games intrigue me. If it does, then usually there's something in that game that I want to look at where the videos or demos don't show it.

At the very same time, the games themselves have changed as well. Many have become longer, requiring more investment than I'm willing or able (mostly willing) to put in. Compare this to anything on the NES, or the majority of games on SNES and Genesis.

It's not even nostalgia that I play lots of old games in my case, really. It's just preference for that simplicity.

Very true. All these games that are coming out these days seem very generic. I think the last game I actually played was Spore, only because it was something new. I promptly stopped playing Spore because it was very limited.

yeah spore is the last game I got excited about,and they crushed my dreams.Like
a dream-crushing machine thing.ow the agony.

Quote: Original post by icarusredux

yeah spore is the last game I got excited about,and they crushed my dreams.Like
a dream-crushing machine thing.ow the agony.

Heh. I never understood the hype behind Spore. It was something new, sort of, but was it not obvious that it wouldn't be all that was promised? Did Peter Molyneux's hype machine teach us nothing?


dream-crushing machine, lol

I have the exact same thought when anyone asks me if I've played <generic new game>... Only games I play often are either TA or AoE (original one) with a friend. I'm much more interested in programming... instead of just mindlessly playing a game for hours, I can be creative, use my brain and get something immensely more constructive out of my time.

Prior to August of last year, I hadn't bought a new game in like 4 or 5 years. I got married, work reasonably long hours, etc so I never thought I could find the time.

But then I entered a programming contest with Microsoft and won (amoung other things) an Xbox 360. Since then, I've bought about 5 games for it, and I'm starting to get back into playing again. I still obviously don't have the same amount of time to invest in gaming as I used to, but I'm enjoying getting back into it...

One advantage to being out of the market for so long is that there's tonnes of older games that I haven't played, so I can pick them up for real cheap second hand.

(You might also notice that my "Member Since" date is around the time I got my Xbox... that's not coincidental [wink])