Thirith on 24/5/2016 at 13:00
In your time as a gamer, have your tastes changed? And if so, was this due mainly to external reasons - e.g. changing trends, more or less available time to play, genres or gameplay types not existing when you were younger - or was it that you changed yourselves?
I've been playing games since the early to mid-'80s, back on the C64, and at the time I played pretty much anything I could get my hands on - which was very little at first, but then, as I got to know people who knew people who knew people who had everything in cracked versions, I was able to play pretty much anything I was interested in. Then again, I don't think I played those early games for hours on end; I'd have long gaming sessions, but they might start with half an hour of Summer Games, then fifteen minutes of Nebulus followed by 30 minutes of Katakis. At least that's how I remember it, and most likely the games I'd play for longer at a time only came later: games like Zak McCracken, The Bard's Tale 3 or Ultima V.
It's around that time - the late 8-bit era and my Amiga years - that I started getting into more story-heavy games, probably also because of my English improving, in part thanks to games. As I moved on to PC gaming, I got heavily into RPGs, although I was always something of a gaming omnivore.
I wouldn't necessarily say that my tastes changed so much as what was on offer changed. There was a long dearth of the classical RPGs I used to love (along the lines of Ultima, Baldur's Gate 2 or Planescape Torment), and the recent examples that I've played were okay, but I didn't get quite as hooked on them. There are genres I never particularly enjoyed, e.g. RTS, and there are others that I played for a while but then lost interest in, e.g. sports games. Differently from many, I didn't stop playing games or reduce my available gaming time, since that thing of having kids and looking after them never happened. Still, sometimes I have weeks or months where I simply don't feel that much like gaming, but these always pass and I again go back to gaming, though probably not as much as before I was in a relationship and got married.
Anyway, I'm really curious to hear how it's been for my fellow TTLGers.
TannisRoot on 24/5/2016 at 14:50
Time is a huge factor. I used to regularly binge on games. Now can only squeeze an hour or two here and there. Part of the main attraction was the binging - getting completely absorbed in a game world was awesome.
With time at such a premium, I tend to choose other activities, especially if they include sharing time with my non-gaming spouse. I still play fan missions on occasion and am debating whether to get a PS4 for the Soulsborne games, but other than that, there's not much out there that I have the time to enjoy properly.
icemann on 24/5/2016 at 16:15
Hmm. Well in the very beginning I played anything I could get my hands on since it was the Atari 2600 / Commodore 64 games. Everything was a new experience back then.
When I got my second console, a Sega Master System I still played anything but discovered RPGs (thanks to Ys The Vanished Omens and Phantasy Star 1) and IMMEDIATELY fell in love with that genre. I had yet to get a PC but can always recall seeing the intro's to Might and Magic 5: Darkside of Xeen and Ultima 8: Pagan. From what point it was my lifes mission to get a PC. At this point in time, besides RPGs I loved 2D platformers and beat'em'ups (eg Double Dragon, Final Fight etc). Not long after Street Fighter 2 came up so fighting games became another genre I loved playing.
Once I got my snes, RPGs were my prime favorite but still enjoyed most genres except for sports games (in the Atari 2600 days I quite enjoyed those). Got a PC not long after and immediately got into FPS games thanks to Wolfenstein 3D + Doom. Also got into real time strategy due to Dune 2. Quite enjoyed adventure games. Full Throttle being my all time favorite of that genre.
Next console was a PS1 and I really loved playing Survival Horror games thanks to Silent Hill 1 and Resident Evil. My love of RPGs and FPS continued. Thanks to Gran Turismo I quite liked that style of racing game. Not a fan of the standard racers. PC wise by this stage was HEAVILY into real time strategy (thanks to Warcraft, Command and Conquer/Red Alert and later Starcraft. Space Flight Sims I was quite into aslong as it was Wing Commander related. Still played 2D platformers a fair bit (mostly Metroidvania style).
By PS2 era - Much of the same here as the PS2 had great games across all categories, and the PC had some AWESOME games. Flight Sims I'd stopped with (as Wing Commander was finished by this stage), and RTS was only playing Starcraft by this point. Got into sandbox games (ala GTA 3) during this stage. Stopped with platformers besides the occasional 3D one (Jak and Daxter).
PS3 - RPG and FPS were my main game types by this stage, and sandbox games. Started to prefer open world RPG games. Quite enjoyed music instrument games (eg Rockband, Guitar Hero) during this point. Great fun at parties.
Present - Much of the same really. Love RPGs and FPS games. Prefer games that are a mix of those 2 really. Love sandbox games, and still play a RTS on occasion.
I forget which console era World of Warcraft's release fits into (ps2 era I think), but I played that for 5 years, stopped for 2 then played for another 6-7 months after Warlord's of Draenor's release then was done with it and MMO's for good. Much prefer singleplayer games nowadays. That said I loved Demon/Dark Souls multiplayer elements.
Also played Ultima Online for 5 years (ps1 era I think).
I definitely don't like 2D platformers as much as I used to. They tend to be quick reflex style games, which I was better at when I was younger. That said FPS games are always fast reflex and I do fine there so I dunno. Change in tastes I guess.
Renault on 24/5/2016 at 17:41
I've been playing games casually since the late 70s (Atari 2600), and probably a little more hardcore since the early 90s (DooM!). But the biggest shift for me is in the last 5-10 years, I've turned into more of a pacifist, and steered away from ultra violent gaming. There's exceptions of course, but I usually try to avoid killing any humans in games anymore, if at all possible (demons, monsters, and zombies are still fair game). I've leaned on more stealth or puzzle related games, and some survival strategy and/or sim titles. I still can't resist the lure of large open world game though, so I do play stuff like Fallout 4 and Far Cry 4. But even within the confines of shooting games like those, I try to avoid violence.
There's always exceptions though - you can't reasonably play Fallout 4 without killing tons of raiders.
Btw, I don't think Thief did this to me, which is what some people would guess. I think I was drawn to Thief because I was heading in that direction anyway.
Getting soft in my old age I guess...
Sulphur on 24/5/2016 at 18:14
I've always played everything I could get my hands on since the time we had an Atari in the house back in the 80s, and I've always, perhaps paradoxically, been attracted to games for the stories they tell. Some of my least favourite genres - sports, racing, things with mazes in them - have always been on my recycle shortlist of CDs That Should Be Repurposed into Flying Rainbow Chakras of Death, and that hasn't changed, except they're not on CD any more.
What has changed these days is I'm generally out of patience for games. I used to be okay with a lot of bullshit as a kid - FF8's spell drain grindy bullshit, adventure game pixelhunt bullshit, Infocom moon logic puzzle bullshit, Another World/Prince of Persia 2's undiluted instakill bullshit, jRPG random encounter every 1.5 seconds bullshit, Morrowind's textdumps and sudden cliff racer facefuck bullshit, etc. Back when we didn't know any better, we had oceans of time to swim in and sink ourselves into a game world or universe, even though a lot of it would have been entire passages of tedium punctuated with moments of joy. The immersion was half the fun, I guess, and the tedium was what made the (eventual) fun times worth it. Well, these days, I'd rather games just stopped wasting my time with boring prologues or controls that are near incomprehensibly convoluted (hello, Arma2) and got on with getting interesting as soon as possible, which is weird because that's exactly the reverse of what my movie watching habits have become.
The games on offer haven't changed so much, near as I can tell, as the games that you once held up as a benchmark are so far removed from the conventions of the current day that the bar they once raised may now only be gathering rust; the genres wax and wane over periods of time, but at any given point there's usually at least some titles in the genres you like if you look around hard enough, even though they may not evoke the taste of a specific brand of lightning within their differently shaped bottles.
froghawk on 24/5/2016 at 19:59
^I'm with you both on the lack of patience for bullshit and aversion to ultraviolence. Sulphur, I also agree with you re: movies - I think slow cinema can be great at atmosphere/mood building, especially if it gives you a lot to contemplate, but in games it literally just feels like a waste of time. There's simply too much to do in the world, even when it comes to media - too many games, too many movies and shows, too many albums, and all available cheaply in mass quantities - to have any reason to waste a ton of time in a game on dumb grinding, filler or figuring out what to do.
faetal on 24/5/2016 at 20:24
I used to be a fan of the backgammon.
Renault on 24/5/2016 at 20:35
I know what you're saying, with me it was lawn jarts.
Thirith on 25/5/2016 at 06:46
Quote Posted by Sulphur
The games on offer haven't changed so much, near as I can tell...
I do think that certain genres simply didn't exist when I started playing games, at least not in any form that I consider sufficiently similar. I'm thinking mainly of immersive sims and sandbox worlds. The kind of systems and environments that were possible on 8-bit machines were much more modest in scope. Did any games exist in the 16-bit era that could usefully be compared to the early immersive sims and sandbox experiences we got in the mid- and late '90s?
Sulphur on 25/5/2016 at 07:17
I'm fairly sure we had sandboxes as a thing - Elite, Starflight, Star Control, games of those ilk before the 16-bit era. Not in terms of being able to interact with said sandboxes in an intricate fashion, of course, as the number of available verbs was quite limited, to be sure.
The immersive sim... well, that depends on what qualities we're looking for, really. Immersion remains a subjective quality, so YMMV depending on the games in question.
The simulation part, now that had very little possible fidelity given the hardware available and the kind of thing that needed simulating: Thief had its precursors in games like Metal Gear, of all things. Deus Ex was a truly post-modern thing in which, at the time, it was described as a 'hybrid genre' game by publications that were trying to make sense of it in previews, but you did get flashes of similar elements in games like Ultima VII, with its NPC schedules and Ultima Underworld, that at least had a 'simulation' approach in mind. There are other games that did emergent things before subsequent titles took the concept off the rails in the late 90s but my memory fails me as to what they were; for instance, there's a relatively free-form open world science fiction game where you had to overcome the antagonist by winning an election of some sort, but I can't for the life of me remember its name.
