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Comment by themagician | Hacker News Reader

I think the strange thing that’s happened with video games is that it used to be that you felt good because you were having fun. In this new era of micro transactions the games aren’t even fun anymore. There is only frustration, and then you pay to alivieate that frustration. You sometimes find yourself sitting there say, “why am I even doing this?”

I genuinely miss gaming. When I try to get back into mainstream titles these days I evtually hit some roadblock mechanic designed to extract dollars and I’m just like, “This shit again?” and bail on the game.

Some developers do it right. Most don’t. There are so many games or experiences that I just don’t think will ever exist again. I don’t know that there will ever be another Ultima Online or EverQuest, or another tactical shooter like Rainbow Six or America’s Army that isn’t pay to win. Or that we’ll ever see another decent RTS ever. It sucks.

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> In this new era of micro transactions the games aren’t even fun anymore. There is only frustration, and then you pay to alivieate that frustration. You sometimes find yourself sitting there say, “why am I even doing this?”

This is one reason I've stopped playing most games that have any kind of online or multiplayer element. Ones that either have a really strong single player mode or don't engage in these kinds of tactics (see civilization games) have been the ones that I end up enjoying long term.

I've found that I end up preferring indie titles not for any philosophical reason, but because many of them don't have the teams needed to create these kinds of mechanisms (successfully anyway). Mobile platforms make it significantly easier to you see it there a lot more too.

>"This is one reason I've stopped playing most games that have any kind of online or multiplayer element. Ones that either have a really strong single player mode or don't engage in these kinds of tactics (see civilization games) have been the ones that I end up enjoying long term."

I've found that Darkest Dungeon is the game I just keep coming back to. No multiplayer, no micro transactions, just you against the game. And I also really like the dark fantasy setting and art style.

Plus it runs great on my X220i, which is nice.

Witcher 3, Nioh, Dark Souls, Elite:Dangerous, Dishonored, Dying Light, Kerbal Space Program, One Piece Pirate Warriors 3, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Yakuza 0/6/Kiwami, Bloodborne, Divinity, Gravity Rush 1/2, Hellblade, Monster Hunter World, Nier, Persona 5, Okami HD, Xcom 1/2, Wasteland 2, and more.

There are a lot of really good games that exist to be played for fun, and not just to suck your money and punish you. Avoid Ubisoft, avoid fee-to-play, and ideally wait for “complete” versions of a game.

I want to add Darkest Dungeon to that list, if you enjoy a dark fantasy/Lovecraftian horror setting and dungeons full of loot.

If you enjoy good games you're no longer the demographic of 'heavily marketed action game #472103' anymore than a person who enjoys good films is the target demographic of 'heavily marketed superhero film #235132345'. This isn't to say all heavily marketed games or movies are bad, but they are targeting a demographic whose primary motivation in purchasing these things has little to do with quality. Consider how mind bogglingly naive the notion of a 'preorder' actually is.

And now think about how publishers view this sort of demographic. This realization is what actually made me drop my disdain for companies like EA. Gaming has gone mainstream. When this happens to anything, the optimal means of monetizing things shifts radically. When you have people that will buy 'artistic products' (as opposed to e.g. - a coffee maker) absolutely blind and will even shell out money to buy products piecemeal, it's hard to be angry about companies taking advantage of this.

All this means is that you're no longer their demographic. In the movie industry this kind of sucks since there aren't thousands of amazing independent films being made. But in the games industry there are! We're undoubtedly going through a gaming golden age right now, so happily step away from the 'mainstream' and consider that the games that fit whatever craving you're having do exist, but it's entirely likely that you've never heard of them before. This is because they don't have those nice 8-9 figure marketing budgets of 'mainstream' games, but also even word of mouth is difficult simply because there are just so many great games.

Aren't there plenty of games that don't follow those pas patterns? I played PS4 God of War. It was amazing and had none of those features.

There are some. God of War, BotW, etc. but they are few and far between and there are entire types of games that don’t even exist anymore or get developed.

What genres don't get developed anymore?

RTS. Used to be a very competitor genre. C&C, AoE, WC… every studio had an RTS or one in the works. Now there is only SCII left. I remember playing games of Red Alert and Total Annihilation they would last all day. Fuck, somone port Red Alert to the Switch pls.

MMORPGs. They get developed now, I guess, but it’s all pay to win garbage. It’s not even the same genre IMO.

Space/tech simulators. We used to have X-Wing, Descent, Freespace, Mechwarrior, Fighter Ace, etc. There used to be an entire SECTION in stores that contained joysticks of all different kinds. Now we just have train simulator with garbage DLC skins.

Realistic, tactical, team-based FPS games. Rainbow Six, America’s Army, etc. The “one shot” kind of FPS where you didn’t just jump around like a bullet sponge.

Steam has been GREAT for small indie games, platformers, and new concepts like KSP. But we’ve also lost a lot as the major studios have all converged towards mass market games.

One crossplatform MMORPG in development, not pay to win, is Project Gorgon.

Yup. I miss good RTS and spacefighter simulators. With the latter, I think FreeSpace 2 with its open-source community-driven remaster is still the best spacefighter sim available today. And it was also story-rich - which is something I miss these days too.

Somewhat related, I spent an ungodly amount of time recently playing Subnautica, and this reminds me that the underwater world has been pretty much forgotten by both games and sci-fi literature/movies. What was the last underwater game I played before Subnautica? Ah, Submarine Titans. A quite fun and beautiful (for that time) RTS. From 18 years ago.

That's true.

I played through X-Wing Alliance last year. It seems weird that they haven't even tried just updating the graphics and re-releasing them. Surely there would be a market.

True about Flight Sims too. That's dried right up.

It's surprising about RTS games, you'd think that's pretty doable for a fairly small team.

I think Jim Sterling mentioned once that the only genres studios care about now are Candy Crush clones and COD clones. Although now it may be Clash of Clans and MOBAs. I don't know.

It's hyperbole but it also seems to be true enough - only a few bandwagon genres seem to get published nowadays. If you happen to like strategy games or action platformers or bullet hell or metroidvania or anything but whatever's hot this year, well, you're SOL outside of indie development and the occasional "spiritual successor."

Space: Elite dangerous is great, and is not alone. That genre is especially popular with mid-level indie groups

Realistic team based FPS: There's ARMA 3 for your heavy duty liking, and Squad is incredible. I believe insurgency is also slightly realistic

All games that don't have a devs vs user-base monetization mindset.

In the end all games become what management considers a good game in its shark eats shark, one up in manipulation - world.

Then there is the fact that a inferior aiming tool (game pad) became the Togo for most modern shooters.

Its feels like a product who's producer mastered the complete mental manipulation of its user-base ages ago. Suddenly all your interests align every time and you wake up feeling used and abused while distinctly remembering having a different opinion before the good times. Gaming might just be ahead of the dystopia curve here. No wonder Yuri-industries pushes the narrative of the strong, self-controlled consumer.

You are entering the town of Rantsend.

I certainly agree that the money (publishers, funding) is going to likely chase what's making money. Games that are free with in app purchased are making way more money than games that aren't.

I don't know if Fornite has any scammy and/or addictive qualities. My understand is it does not and is making the most money of any game ever. Around 10 million per day at the moment. So yes, the funding will probably go to those types of games more than the GoW, BotW type of games.

Wouldn't say they're few and far between. I mean, the current Nintendo Switch lineup is about 80% games that don't rely on pay to win mechanics, as are many games on other systems (especially indie titles).

The ratio of good games have dropped. I'm sure there are similar numbers, but the amount of crap has increased, esp. the mobile market.

Good games in the mobile market is far and few between.

The ratio of good games has dropped but that’s because the market is a lot larger now. You can still fill all your free time playing “good” games and completely ignore the rest of the market.

I daresay there are fewer than 20 mobile games that aren't ports from other platforms but are still good and high quality in their own right. There are plenty of decent ones that don't engage in scummy behaviour, sure, but I wouldn't even consider playing them on other platforms where there are much more complex, interesting, and immersive games.

It sounds like games are simply being optimized for monetization, not for making you feel good.

For example, someone discovered that 'stamina' (like arcade credits, but recharging over time even when you're not playing) was a great way to monetize, since people will want to open the app more and play and see ads because if you don't you're Wasting Hearts! That's leveraging frustration for sure, but it turns out frustration keeps people playing as much as fun does. And now you wonder why stamina systems are all over microtransaction-laden mobile games.

Welcome to capitalism :). The industry didn't change, it's still on the same trajectory of optimizing for profit. Getting ahead by making games more fun, and then making them prettier, were the lower-hanging fruits. We're past those indirect methods now - at this point, more direct methods of optimizing for profit are being applied.

This seems to be a pattern I see in every industry, and with every product. Whenever a market is created, things improve up to some point, and after that they degrade. I wish there was a way to stop this evolution at the peak of quality, before the decay and customer abuse takes hold.

Question: is the absolute number of high-quality games released every year going up or down? It's blatant that the average quality has been on a downhill trend since the advent of mobile gaming. But, are many pay-to-win games also good as works of art? Or just good drugs?

I have a feeling the power of contrast is at work, though I'm not really 'into' gaming enough to bring much evidence to bear.

You don't have to play mainstream if they don't make mainstream for you. You can play niche games or old games.

I still have fun with a lot of games, but those are usually indie games from Steam. I've more or less sworn off of AAA games, though. I already know they're going to be ruthlessly monetized, bug ridden, joyless Skinner boxes full of toxic assholes and I'm not even going to bother.

I worked for a time as a video game tester. It burned out every ember of interest in playing video games in me. I'd say that was a nice fringe benefit.

There are open source projects though trying to cater to this.. Spring-Rats and 0AD come to mind.

Open source games are kind of doomed to fail. At least they always have been.

Depends on the metric. They'll almost always fail in terms of market share precisely because they don't optimize for market share. They win by other metrics.

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