Sounds a strange question?

I am not really a gamer at all anymore, haven't been for years, I still play Wolf:ET when I can and have done since about 2005, but that's partly a community aspect, it's the same server and people for the last 9 years. I really just find myself checking out trailers and tech demos. I used to be when I was younger however, and now that I have got into the programming and theory I will never see a game the same again. I am however much more interested in making games, I see it more like making a movie than a game, an interactive movie.

It's hard keeping up though with what is happening in the game world, there are only so many hours in the day and not enough to be actually checking out what is going on, never mind the costs of it all, so I am really out of touch with actual gameplay but I still have plenty of ideas the kind of game I would like to make.

So how about you guys, do you still buy and play games regularly?

I know what you mean. What people expect from games has somewhat changed. I have a bunch of posts on my research on this topic. I made a recent post called FlashBack Games. Gave me that old feeling again, when games used to be an enjoyable pastime.

Games are a social outlet. But I my first issue with the way games were going is that they were pushing the socializing to the internet. So, you are not in the same room with the people you are playing against. I think this destroys the social part a little. And so Microsoft and Sony are trying to make up for the part they are missing by connecting you more over the internet. So now you can see people and talk to them more. Still they are not in the same room as you are. So now you have Project Morpheus, which tries to make up for it even more.

The feeling this gives me is the feeling I get about the Reality Distortion Field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

Games used to be more fun (not hours of cursing and swearing because some guy keeps getting head shots on you). And games used to be a way for people to spend time together, and hangout. But the internet and this digital personality avatar anti-social socialization has split up people more than anything.

My mom texts me instead of coming and talking to me, and we are in the same house. A cyber bully talks all kinds of stuff over Facebook, but in school he doesn't say a word to defend himself.

I am a casual gamer for that reason.

I play games with other people, simply to have a reason to hangout and do something, but not all day every day.

If you can make a game that brings back that childhood feeling of fun, then that is what you should go for. Create a game that brings people together, not separate them.

You see the issue Zynga is perhaps unintentionally creating by taking down its game.

My favorite games right now are:

-Super Sonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars

-Knack

-- Contrast

I am no longer a gamer, in 2010 I got hooked on C#, although it wasn't my first language it was the first language, and I guess environment, where I truly enjoyed programming. Gaming very much went stale after that, the challenges in programming regardless of what they were, were far more attractive than game challenges. I still extended subs, bought games and expansions but never lasted longer than a few days on them. Eventually I stopped caring or spending money on games though I will happily talk about new releases, watch vids and try to be 'sold' by advertisement now and then, though this is super rare and non-productive sites like youtube are blocked for me anyway, but honestly I feel like I am immune to games now which is funny since I was once a gaming addict. I guess it is true what they say, to get rid of one addiction replace it with another.

I have always considered, especially with the way it works that gfx programming (not necessarily game programming) is like creating your own world where the possibilities are endless. I have always admired games like Sim City or strategy games where construction was the main part of the game, but the building aspect doesn't even come remotely close to what one can create with gfx programming or programming in general. To top it off, no time is wasted programming and you are always learning. For me programming is my 'game of choice' though the social aspect is limited

Keep having fun with programming.

were far more attractive than game challenges.

Exactly! A lot of the challenge is gone for the appeasement of people who prefer to have things the easy way. Its more political than anything.

Another way games were used is to simulate life in order to teach life lessons. This is where the "experience" type games are coming from, although I really don't agree with the lessons many games teach.

But making games so easy teaches a lesson that life is easy. So without a challenge, we are ill-prepaired to face the real challenges in life. Chess isn't that popular anymore, but I learned a lot about strategy from it, and I apply it in real life.

A child used a strategy he learned from a game to save a person's life. etc.

Like most developers I play lots of games. In that sense, yes I am a gamer. However, a lot of people associate "gamer" with a particular gamer culture. That culture is heavily male, somewhat younger (mentally if not physically), racially heavily white, etc. These are the people you see active on forums and gaming news sites. I do not consider myself part of that culture and I don't want anything to do with that culture. I consider them to be poisonous and detrimental to the industry as a whole in practically every aspect.

Setting aside the culture aspect of things, I've found that I have more awareness of the trends in the industry that aren't the big AAA stuff, most of which is repetitive nonsense. Same as pop music or many movies. The interesting stuff is not happening, by and large, in the really mainstream visible stuff. We're lucky in that nowadays, indie and small studio games are more accessible than ever. It's so much easier to find quality indie work that is off the beaten path creatively, artistically, or gameplay wise than it was even five years ago.

That culture is heavily male, somewhat younger (mentally if not physically), racially heavily white, etc.

I saw a lecture on youtube where the guy gave the same description about people employed in the computer programming industry. Strange.

So how about you guys, do you still buy and play games regularly?

Yep, have a huge PS3 collection. I bought GTA 5 and plan to get MGSV in a few days. I play them regularly as I'm of the mind that I have to play games to see what is being done and mentally pick apart the game coding wise. I got into game dev because of my love of games and interest in programming. Mortal Kombat was the game that made me realize I could make something to attempt to entertain people.

Also, wouldn't this have been more suitable for the Lounge forum rather than here?

I play some games. Or should I say, re-play, since I prefer games from late 90's From modern games I play Smite and some games I find cool (I am very demanding gamer). But I must say I mostly spent my time coding than playing. Sometimes when friends show me a gameplay of new game I am like "WOW, they got nice shading". Same thing happens when I play, I am like "wow, what a nice material on that trash can..." or "this shadow artifacts are strange, wonder what's causing them" and at the same time I die or crash or whatever

Oh, and I once heard something like that: "I am not playing games, I am checking what kind of technology competition has" :)

I don't really even understand how people can say they considered themselves a gamer and then "stopped" being one. A lot of what I'm reading is also basically "I stopped being a gamer because the popular culture for it sucks." I don't even get that, that's like saying you stopped liking to play guitar because you suddenly felt the music industry was stale. In fact I don't even really agree what the "popular culture" for games is either.

In my opinion to consider yourself any kind of serious gamer and not just the "oh I play a cow clicker in my spare time" or "oh I bought a ps4 and the latest cod game cause everyone says to" I think it requires some sort of devotion to the subject of games, to be aware of the different genres and to play new games on a rather regular basis. "Gamer" as a dictionary term might as well be the same as calling someone a carpenter if they take a hammer and nail two pieces of wood together. I'm not trying to be insulting, rather I just find it silly people have such a sparse definition of what makes someone a gamer. Its not any different from how you should be able to tell someone is really into programming if you talk about the subject with them.

I consider myself a gamer, and I always will, because games are never just going to stop being fun for me, they're what I do in my spare time usually.

I also find it bizarre and probably a really bad thing that someone can like to make games but not like to play games, that doesn't speak very good volumes about how good their games are going to end up if they don't even know how to have fun with them, considering we're on a forum devoted to game development.

Games are software, yes, but they are also art in a way, and a challenge of design. Even just being a coder for a game you can sometimes make much better decisions that make a game more fun, just by changing how you code something, you don't even have to be the designer. Games are a product of their sum.

Unfortunately my dislike of DRM was becoming greater than the enjoyment I got from playing games. A few years ago I just kinda stopped caring about them, which seems sad.

The last games I played were most of the typical ID Software ones (Quake III, Wolf:ET). The last game I bought was Half-Life 2 but was so disgusted by the reactivation anytime I re-installed Windows that I think it was the last straw.

Since then I got interested in OSS platforms like Linux and BSD. At the time this greatly reduced the games available to me but did open up many other interests. Interests which are not governed by companies trying to suck every last penny out of their customers or companies that would rather alienate their customers in order to slightly inconvenience a few pirates.

Unfortunately now things like the 30 day "developer license" from Microsoft and the yearly device specific "provisioning profile" from Apple are starting to even make hobby programming suck and feel meaningless lol.

Edit: Although I do work for a games company, I still very much enjoy it because the productivity and software development side of it still provides many interesting problems to solve. Likewise I run the occasional lecture at a University and enjoy showing students how to develop their own stuff (in the hope that they will one day write an awesome DRM-free game that runs on BSD ;)