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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

I'm a tad younger than you and I'd like your opinion. I stopped caring about the gaming industry because

1) even if it's entertainment, I think the deep value is .. as a kid thing. It's not dismissive, I just think that gaming value has limits. It's a dreamy world you interact with and that fits the younger brain. As adults you'd rather master the real world more.

2) I find games today not much more original than in the past, it plateau-ed somehow [0] and they're mostly selling more technical oomph to justify new things.

[0] to be honest I interact very lightly with games, only a cousin younger than I show me some stuff, this plus the fads you can hear about online.

Do you really think a PS5 game will be that much more enjoyable than a PS2 game ? The other question .. well you answered it. You and your friends are still into them.

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> Do you really think a PS5 game will be that much more enjoyable than a PS2 game

Can be, absolutely.

I played Read Dead Redemption 2 last year. There's a wild west cowboy outlaw game in there somewhere with a storyline that you can finish, but what completely blew my mind is how stunningly beautiful it is, how beautiful the world you're riding around in is, and how ugly human encroachment on nature is. Because as time progresses in the game, the frontier moves a little bit further, more trees are felled, more clearings made, more houses built, more railway tracks are laid, more humans, more civilization, more stinking cities.

You absolutely could not make a game like that on a PS2. You need a 4K screen and hi-res textures and HDR lighting to really make the world pretty, to really make you care about that world.

I played Zelda: Breath of the Wild on the Switch as well. It's also an open-world game, and because it has infinite draw distance, they've managed to craft a world where no matter where you stand, you can see something interesting in the distance. I have never played a game that made me be so excited to explore and to get sidetracked as that game. The actual gameplay is also expertly bite-sized, so it doesn't matter if you play for 15 minutes or 15 hours, you still have the same sense of progression.

You absolutely could not make a game like that on a GameCube. You need hardware enough to do a seamless open world with infinite draw distance and no loading screens, otherwise the experience just doesn't work, just wouldn't be able to show you all it has to offer all at once.

LIke I say, I'm not a hardcore gamer so I don't know if I'm best qualified to answer your questions, but basically...

1) Everything has its limits. There are seven basic plots[0] and while human creativity has an amazing ability to retell them in different ways, after a while you definitely start to see patterns. The real world is great and I definitely keep up with current affairs etc, but if you look too closely in any direction things are kind of messed up. Sometimes a dreamy world is a nice place to be, particularly if you can get there without risking too much damage to yourself.

2) I guess every art form is constrained by its boundaries - you could say that nothing much has happened in portaiture in the last 600 years. I think that story telling is getting better in gaming, and player choice and branching is definitely something that keeps pushing outwards. The whole online/collaborative scene is something that we've wanted from the start and is really only being solved satisfactorily now.

> Do you really think a PS5 game will be that much more enjoyable than a PS2 game?

Not necessarily - some old games are great, and the whole retro-gaming craze is a testament to this - but that will only feed the cumulative growth of games. People will be playing the classics and the new releases.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots

> There are seven basic plots[0]

That book's theories should be considered critically, not as an accepted view of literature.

1) I don't see it. All adults I know who aren't into gaming still enjoy non-real world things for entertainment. Be they books, movies, sports, TV, etc. You work at mastering your profession, raising your kids, and all the other real world stuff and sometimes you just want to enjoy life.

2) Yes and no. I think this comes around to the fact that there are only so many stories and that there have been original games but they tend not to be big. The big genres in games have been pretty well defined and while original things do get introduced, most are refinements. Also execution matters much more than original content in games and that seems to be hit and miss.

Personally I went through a period of about 15 years where I gamed very little. A time when my kids were young and work was much more demanding. I got back into gaming maybe 6-7 years back when my kids were old enough to have their own interests and I professionally became confident enough that I didn't need constant study. So it might be something that changes as you grow.

I recently started gaming after a good 8-10 years of non gaming. I installed Dirt Rally and bought a racing wheel controller. It is a blast to drive in a simulator-like game. I don't think it is a game I would've have enjoyed as a kid or a teen. The current gaming landscape is broad and covers more niches than ever before. Explore games that align with your interests.

Your 1st argument could be made for watching television. Television shows also range from self-learning to toddler cartoons to historical dramas.

I am surprised many of my non-gaming friends/relatives, even if they do not play themselves, do not seem to be absolutely amazed by modern games. The fact that we can have such rich worlds as GTA 5, affordable to so many, run in one's living room, with such amazing graphics and overall richness, that we can control and interact with, rendered in 4k in real time! Even as a tech person I find that almost unbelievable. And all of that created in such a short period of time, too!

To me, it seems like an absolutely astonishing achievement of humanity, one of the marvels of this world. Completely mindblowing. And yet the reaction I get from a lot of people, e.g. my older relatives, but also people in their 30s and 40s, is of complete indifference - "meh, games are for kids". I struggle to understand that.

I interact less with games not because I don't like playing them but because I have far less time for them. Honestly, I do casual games a lot more simply because they are easier to pick up and put down.

Gaming got me into programming (mods are fun).

> 2) I find games today not much more original than in the past, it plateau-ed somehow

This can be typically said about the mainstream AAA market but much less so about indie games from small teams.

Good point, it's mostly about the mainstream market structure. Higher stakes => less risk.

AKA how movies and TV get made

>Do you really think a PS5 game will be that much more enjoyable than a PS2 game

The PS5 will be the first console to support VR at launch. Thats a huge difference. VR games are light night and day compared to flat screen gaming.

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