why I quit being a gamer 

Just playing devils advocate on your initial example here…all the way back in 1991 Sagat was NOT included. He was a boss character. He was totally unplayable. His first playable incarnation was in the upgraded Street Fighter II Championship Edition. The iterations of many Capcom fighting games almost feel like proto-DLC. And if you bought SFV vanilla days after SF6 came out…you probably got it for $5 or something. You can regularly get the final full version of V for $20. $20 is not bad for getting a full game with every character. I’ll never defend predatory micro transactions but I don’t feel like your example with Street Fighter is very good.

Man, it's not just gaming; it feels as though the magic is being stamped out of everything, and on purpose. So demoralizing... which of course, is the whole idea.

You now know why millions of people prefer to pirate the old rather than buy the new. Gaming used to be run by its creators. Now it's driven by investors.

I didn't expect Louis to be a gamer but he's said what exactly crosses my mind.

There's a reason retro gaming and game emulation have been getting more popular over the last few years.

It’s not just games, it’s everything. Corporate culture is putting paywalls in everything

Only indie games are worth it now. They give great little single player experiences that run on toasters. They are made with a real artistic drive, with great stories or satisfying gameplay loops that never get tiring.

Honest publishers and one man operations are alive and well producing wonderful pieces of art and I love them dearly. Most AAA titles are just noise to me.

A big red flag is when a single player game requires an internet connection. It's always for the corporation's benefit, not yours.

43 now, and definitely not a mainstream gamer, but I deeply love video games. What I'm looking for these days is gaming experiences, not simply games, and I've found them in gems like Hellblade, Gris and the Witcher 3 as a few recent examples. Not everything is a loot box riddled mess, and being a patient gamer helps in more ways than one

This is a video I did not expect. I have about 30 years in electronics and I have been working towards the release of my first video game. We started our endeavors a few years before this "pay to play" microtransaction crap but it's in our mission statement that we believe you pay for a game once and there are no $150 Platinum level versions either. As a developer I encourage anyone and everyone to stop purchasing games from companies that use these extortion tactics in their games.

Honestly, this is why I have skewed more into playing indie games compared to bigger-name titles with very rare exceptions like Elden Ring. I also really love the innovative and creative directions that indie games take that make a game that's $20, or even less or free, more enjoyable than most AAA games that are asking $60 or, more recently, $70, and then they ask for more money through DLC, microtransactions, and/or Season Passes. It was Shovel Knight that got me back into video games back in 2014, and it also taught me to look for games that aren't always the big-budget titles that are getting massive amounts of press and attention.

I agree. These Psychopaths don’t want any one to be happy because their lives suck

Downloading an emulator and a bunch of games is what saved me from giving up on gaming. I felt so burnt out by modern games that I stopped playing for a while but replaying the old good games kinda changed that. Now I'm more into discovering old games I never played and I'm having a good time. It even helped me like modern games more since I'm not constantly dealing with their bullshit.

100% this. And don't get me started on the massive amount of cheaters in online games, loot boxes, and the whole pay-to-win thing.

Louis, you should consider Retro Arch as an easy way to emulate all of your favorite old games in one application. Also, Gran Turismo 2 has a new rom hack/mod that restores a bunch of cut content. It's called Gran Turismo 2 Plus. If you are a GT2 fan I highly recommend it.

Part of what destroys gaming nowadays is the new age acceptance of WORK instead of gaming. Too many addicts refuse to acknowledge they are NOT playing a game - they're being farmed for their time and money, many of which are 100% self-interested "influencers".

Here is a little lesson I've learned playing games: "Fun" is bad for the company. "Fun" means you get what you need and so you don't need to pay any more money to the company - that's a problem! which is why games don't try to be "Fun" but rather "Frustrate you into spending more money for the promise of fun" - or in other words, games are stressful by design, they don't want your fun, they want your money, all of it.

The problem with the current gaming industry is all the newcomers (gen z) think it's normal for a game to have DLC or have "pay to win" elements. They don't know before the internet was a thing, games actually came in a fully complete form, and all you needed to give was your time lol. We need videos like this for people to realize we have the power to change things.

"It's very sad to see people waste their money on buying a mansion, a private lear jet, college tuition for their three children, a trip into space and back, and fulfilling all their dreams, when for the same money you could have upgraded nearly two characters in our game to their maximum potential!" - AAA video game deelopers in the 2020s

Like every other industry, it went from people making cool stuff because they wanted to and happening to make money, to making things for the purpose of making money. That's why they nickel and dime you on everything. That's why you can't just buy a game whole and play it anymore. At least we have the indie scene alive and well, and full of passionate people just trying to make cool stuff because they can and they want to.

This is why retro gaming is coming back in a big way. Compilations from Sega, Capcom, and Atari are always being re-released on different platforms all the time. You don't have to straight up quit being a gamer, just embrace the old school.

The easy balance for me between not getting screwed and not doing work is just not buying new games. Once a game is 3 to 5 years old, it's usually super clear on the steam store/etc if and how much dlc there is.

I'm from Poland and until 1995 Piracy was legal so many of us know how to do it 😉 We act honestly, we buy games and subscriptions but as soon as we feel cheated we go back to piracy. We may feel bad about it, but we have a sense of justice.

Hit the nail on the head. Another thing that has turned me away from gaming recently is the lack of art in games. People wrote such good stories and lines in plaintext that got me immersed into games with simple graphics and now despite the fancy graphics from a 2000$ GPU games rarely feel immersive, instead they feel like a chore, like here's a task you 'need' to do, here's the next mission etc. Most of it is just lazy formulaic garbage.

In my lifetime video games have shifted from being magical and fascinating into something cynical and predatory. And i feel cynical myself because I'm starting to think that is just what happens when an industry matures.

This is exactly what drives me to pirating almost everything except for indie games nowadays. I don't even mind paying for games, it's just the fact that they want to continually charge me after i've already paid for the game and try to suck every last cent out of me that drives me straight to the torrent sites. Not supporting a business that nickle and dimes you to death

So glad to hear this sentiment. I've decided to opt out of "Early Access", "live service"/"MMO", and "Free to Play experience!" games. And even with that and the desire to _completely_ opt out, I can't even say that anymore. The day that the only franchise I particularly care about anymore, Monster Hunter, becomes more cash shop than gameplay, I'm sticking 100% to emulation, indie, and old games.

Shit Louis. You're heard loud and clear but the future of gaming may not change for the better or at least for a long time. The fact that every 5-10 years a new generation of kids come into the world and tell mom/dad to buy the games will not change imo. Mom and dad will oblige to their kids wants so they're happy or momentarily complacent. Even if that means forking out another few bucks for unlockables. The people with the checkbooks and credit cards will need to take a stand but good luck with that - telling your kids no. Very few. At the least adults will still turn to video games to in large proportions just bc, even if they dont pay more for the microtransactions. Its a new business model pay to play and telling people not to play is like telling people to leave reddit. Btw I've got no kids just an observation

These days, you don't buy a game, you rather buy a software license. The software license is subject to change and may be revoked at any time, for any reason. There is nothing you can do about it because you agreed to these terms when you bought the 'game'. You own nothing and better be happy about it.

Older games are amazing. You could keep playing new old games for a very long time and never run out of content that does not try to exploit you

It's actually worse than that in some cases. There are some publishers who have these scummy tactics patched into games after release, so even if you did your research, even if you read every review of a game, none of them would mention the microtransactions, because the version the reviewers played didn't have them. And I'm not talking months after release to scrape a few more dollars because the game didn't break even, I mean literally days after release, pretty sure Call of Duty did it not long ago.

100% agreed. Maybe once I no longer have to do research to see if a game is censored, has predatory monetization, is full of employees that hate me personally, actively turns against their existing audience to appeal to a phantom "wider audience", etc. THEN I'll consider giving them another chance. Until then, older games and indies are just fine.

Gaming went from a pastime hobby to a full time lifestyle

I've spent the last few years in gaming focusing on smaller indie games, where a team of people had a vision for what they wanted to make, made it, then sell it at a fair price. A lot of this squeezing happens less in the indie sphere (and generally the graphics requirements are much more reasonable)

Retro gaming is where it's at. Thousands of titles available for peanuts and almost perfect emulation on modest hardware.

Yeah I completely agree, the last years really felt like gaming companies are really trying to scam you. Overpriced products, lots of editions of the same game with an excel file to explain the preorder bonuses, low effort remakes, bugs upon bugs, microtransactions, season passes announced even before the game is out, physical editions that still require more than half the game to be digitally downloaded, and so on and so forth. It really seems like most major companies are doing this nowadays, with Nintendo being the one that does this thing the less at least...

Old man luis, were on street fight 6 already. Street fighter 5 was just a bunch of paid dlc. If you want a good deal, get Street fighter 30th anniversary, its got the first game, 5 versions of street fighter 2, alpha 1-3, and 2 versions of street fighter 3. Available in all platforms. No dlc.

I was nodding the whole way through this video. You’re absolutely 100% on point here. I couldn’t agree more.

Sadly, I think the main takeaway is at the personal level. Like you said at the end - opt out of systems that treat you like crap. But there are too many people with impulsive spending issues, whiny kids with parents who want to stick them in front of a game, and massive whales who spend $1000+ per week on mtxs that it's almost impossible to change at this point. Making decisions for your own well being is really just the best way to cope with everything these days, there are so few things we can actually change even with a ton of collective action.

I like watching Louis' videos because I get to LARP like we live in a world where reason and good sense can prevail. But we don't. This type of business practice will just continue if not increase.

1,000,000% agreed. I am currently playing games that are 7-8 or more years old mostly. Too much greed from publishers to have an enjoyable experience with most modern games.

"research is for work" Bro, that says it all! This is the problem with modern gaming and SF5 is the perfect example, SF5 was a wake up call for me. I remember in between matches, the game would be advertising the game to me I already bought!

You don't have to play the newest game if you enjoy the old ones. :D But yes, this has been happening for the last decade, mainly in AAA games. Ps: looking at the steam page for the dlc list isn't that much work, and reading player reviews usually also tells you if the game is predatory. Don't get me wrong I completely agree with everything you said otherwise, and even as someone who plays daily I find it relatable

Indie games are still amazing. Forgotten City was good enough to fix my RU-vid addiction (no kidding), and Teardown is so great that I cannot help but compare it to Portal, because it offers gameplay that is different from everything that came before it while having a really great atmosphere. But yeah, the only AAA games I still play are ones that are many years old, lol.

As someone who just plays indie games to experience the creative things people come up with, this kind of monetization has not reached me. Yet.

The indie scene is treasure trove of good games, provided you are open-minded. Then there are some fantastic remakes that are surprisingly staying true to the OG coming out that are worth the small amount of time they ask (System Shock). At this point, Im going through my backlog and seeing if I can find games I want to play, since I have the hardware to either play them and/or dump them for emulation (hey, as long as I possess my original copy, Im well within my right according to DMCA).

Absolutely 100% spot on, especially that part about games becoming jobs. Gaming has arrived in the centre of society, where previously it was more of a niche, nerd thing. Sadly, that also means there's lots of money to be made, so it brings all the adds, all the shady business practices etc. with it. And it made games more than just a fun pastime. Now it's a lifestyle, a part of 'social' media, a part of personal identification, bragging rights and constant comparison.

Gaming is the first time I experienced this new form of corporate greed. I saw this coming when games started implementing "battle passes" 5 or so years ago and I have almost completely given up on gaming because of it

The “it’s just cosmetics” kids don’t realize how easy they made it for these greedy companies.

The real soul of gaming you fell in love with still exists in the indie scene if you're willing to open your heart up to it

I've been saying this for years, when I was a kid, all you had to do was buy a game at the store, put it in your console, and just play it. That's it. You just put your game in the console and just played. There was no signing in online, no creating an account, no paid downloadable content, no patches or updates, because the game had to work 100% when they put it out.

Watching this while gaming. But I gotta say, games are getting more and more boring the better and better the graphics get.

It’s sad the state of modern gaming right now with micro transactions being littered everywhere just to get a “full experience” that used to come with just buying the game. Was pleasantly surprised when I started playing Deep Rock Galactic which gives you the full game with buying it. You can only pay for optional cosmetics which is all micro transactions SHOULD be at most. I wish more companies would follow a similar route but greed seems to reign supreme these days…

This is why as an indie developer we do not put microtransactions in all of our games, its either a free one with trial content or the full game as is or as they call shareware in the early days, as we also grew up in an era wherein whenever we buy the product, the game is complete with all its intended features to play to your hearts content and actually giving out the joy and fun of gaming to the people; just as we have experienced during our childhood days. The feeling of buying a complete game without corporate greed just hits different and provides more value in the long term and makes the game remembered. As you always say Louis, try to make a change in your own little corner of the world.

I do no research whatsoever on games before playing them, but by almost exclusively playing indie games, I have largely avoided every problem you have described.

I agree. I am still playing 3DS games emulated on PC. Good times, when games were shipped in a complete state instead of publishers instantly announcing 2 season passes for 2 years of updates for a total price of only $120.

I think the stuff you are talking about is why I ended up mostly playing indie games. It wasn't even a conscious decision but just the result of more and more AAA games having practices which I shied away from :/

You hit the nail on the head. As long as you don't need the latest and greatest there is already more than enough great games out there from previous generations to last a lifetjme.

Very well said. Video games are a chore nowadays. I wish that we could have another industry crash like in the early 1980s.

While everything you say it's absolutely true , and the gaming industry is in the worst spot it has ever been in both quality of games and monetization (At least in the AAA department) , I find picking SFV somewhat funny because it is one of the few games who actually let you unlock characters through (sometimes months of) grinding.

This is the reason why i dont look at gaming as something i love any more. Its just something I'll do when i have the fraction of the day left

This happens when a hobby is turned into a business. It happened to movies, now happened to video games.

i never thought i'd say it because i always valued gaming as a hobby, but i'm going to be very controlling of the video games i let my kids play. letting them play most modern games is akin to giving your kid a gambling addiction or sticking them into a skinner box to keep them entertained.

This is why I've been buying fewer games as I get older...that and fewer games have the technical depth I've come to expect from many franchises. I've been a Diablo fan since 1997, but Diablo Immortal made me bitter from all the monetization and the psychological tactics used to coerce players to spend money. I haven't even bought Diablo IV because of the egregious monetization.

It's one of the reasons I am always gaming about 3 or 4 years behind the current trend. I always wait until they are just about to release the next game in the series and the last game goes on sale in the GOTY or the "Ultimate" edition with every DLC ever released included for $13.

Not only gaming is 'pay to play/win', many developers went the route of making games easy to play to attract casual gamers, which means that very little skill is needed to be proficient.

This actually confused me when I got into Tekken a few years ago, I noticed many veteran characters were dlc so I wondered how returning players felt about mastering a character just for it to not be in the main roster of the next game

Remember the days when if a game was an incomplete mess on release it just died? No chance for patches or add-ons, they got one shot to make a good game so actual effort and care was put into it.

Yeah, as a person that literally devoted my live to games seeing this happen sucks enjoyment out of life. I grew up with games, I always wanted to make games. Now that I'm a game programmer I have to turn down job offers because they try to convince me to join by saying "we make live action games that suck every penny out of customers". But at least there are still indie games that for the most part don't partake in this rotten garbage. Some bigger studios are still decent too. But it's heartbreaking seeing this trend with gaming.

I sort of woke up to the abysmal practices of the modern industry a long time ago. Microtransactions, day 1 DLC, broken launches, dev teams that span into the hundreds instead of a small group of passionate developers like we had back then, agenda pushing, removal of features/mechanics, casualization, remake after remake after remake, grindy game mechanics that only exist to keep you addicted rather than be fun, it's all just so tiresome. But my interest in video games persists because we have an entire 40 year history of retro games to explore and I absolutely love it. Literally, every game from before 2005 lacks these aforementioned features. You pay for the game, and you have the entire experience at your hands, and while it's cliche to say this, they had soul. You can tell that the people who made these things poured their hearts into the development cycles, unlike today where it just seems like video games exist to wring you out of every single penny. I occasionally play a modern game every once in a while (the Resident Evil 4 Remake really impressed me), indies too, but the majority of my time playing video games comes from retro titles. I advise all other games do the same and stop giving these people your money lol

The 90s was the best decade for gaming as there were so many studios making games. Then they got bought out, many by EA, and it all went downhill fast.

I've grown up mostly playing on my GB Advance SP & Xbox 360. Only once I built my first PC in 2014 did I discover the massive amount of potential that indie games have to offer. I've been playing almost exclusively indie and small-studio games ever since and I don't regret it one bit. Personal favorites include Deep Rock Galactic, Synthetik, Factorio, and recently Battlebit Remastered. You can really feel the passion and care smaller devs but into their games in contrast to AAA cash-grab bullshit.

That is so true. Back in the day inside a teeny tiny 650 mb disc you could have your game+2 player mode+ fun/ extra modes+ soundtrack jukebox+ developer videos. But nowadays you have to pay extra even for the main parts of some games or to get the soundtrack.. Everyday gaming is losing it's core soul and values to make more money.

Our opinions on these topics are so damn similar, it's crazy, i also got an r9 380 2gb, no problem with the card today, but vram is lacking hard..

I agree with your Louis, a huge chunk of the video game industry is turning to anti consumer, ludopath, douchbagery ... It's so sad and frustrating. AAA games are no longer in my buying list either.

Funny thing, Final Fantasy VII has a big "anti corporate" message, but it's been milked to death by Square, the corporate owner. Love the original, and it's gone downhill since. I agree with everything you said, I usually get games years after release, when the bugs are tolerable, prices make sense, and I can tell if it's a micro transaction money pit. I don't agree to pay to be a beta tester (honesty, alpha tester these days).

I wish more people had your outlook. Unfortunately for every person opting out of modern gaming there are 1000 more people who let themselves be exploited by it. The moment everybody refuses to be exploited and stop buying in to these dirty practices is the moment it will stop. I do not have confidence that moment will ever happen 😢

Take heart Louis, there are plenty of small developers who make great games that work the first tine and don't come with extra DLC for sale. You pay once and get the whole game. Its mainly the giant AAA games that have gone to shit, but not the small players. You're also right that there are enough vintage games to last a lifetime.

I loved Zone of the Enders. Too bad Metal Gear overshadowed it.

The problem with modern day gaming doesn't come down to people not caring if their hobby is being nickle and dimed. Rather, people who play games for fun no longer have the spending power to derail companies who enact on these scummy practices because that's by design. Gamers have been pushed out of the space by ESG and corporate who hate games and now make products that are tailor made for gambling addicts who would spend their entire life savings on a game the same way they would do so on a trip to Vegas. The worst part about this is that there isn't a thing a gaming hobbyist can do about it unless they got a couple hundred million dollars to lobby for an update to gambling laws to include these scummy practices and that's not including all the red tape that would come from a corrupt process that is controlled by people who would make such a proposal ineffective on behest of their ""donors""

Wheee Louis with a gaming critique video :3

The biggest problem is FOMO and perpetual transactions. If I buy a game, play the game for a while, I can eventually get a 100% completion rate and feel proud. Nowadays, you are always chasing new content to feel connected to the game. This is also leads to the fact that its harder for a game to have success unless there is social media component or a huge marketing presence surrounding the game. We are probably going to see a contraction of the videogame industry.

I gotta disagree with Louis on this Specific Issue. Modern Gaming is Trash, but his Sagat Street Fighter 5 Example is not accurate. First off, Fighting Games have always been like this. Let's go back to the Super Nintendo Days when you bought Street Fighter 2 for $60. A couple Months later, Super Street Fighter 2 came out with 4 New Characters, AND YOU HAD TO PAY $60 ALL OVER AGAIN JUST FOR 4 CHARACTERS! Let's say you Bought Street Fighter Alpha 2, but a couple months later Street Fighter Alpha 3 came out and you wanted to try out the New Characters? ANOTHER $60! Nowadays. You can pay $60 for a Video Game, then if you only want 1 Extra Character, it's like $6 just for that one character. OR... Fighting Games are like "Hey, for 60 Dollars, we'll give you the game, and you can pay for characters in advance as we are developing them." I'm not going to explain the concept Video Game Development and the fact a lot of work goes into these games. Video Games cost money to make. I am fully comfortable paying $60 for Street Fighter 6, plus More Money for Characters coming in the Future. I truly believe it's worth it and I get my money's worth. As well, how the F*** did you load up Street Fighter 5 and you can't play Sagat? You can buy Street Fighter 5: Champion Edition, and it comes with All 46 Characters for $30.

This is why more & more people are chosing piracy over buying stuff

The Streaming industry streamlined people's mind into a hive where people buy and play the game of the moment that the streamers are "telling" them to play.

I get your point, but street fighter games (or fighting games in general) is a really bad example to illustrate it. Street fighter games in the past also released many versions (base game, turbo, super, hyper, ultra), and with each version they added new characters, except instead of just paying for the characters you want you had to buy an entire new game. Now you could argue that in the past you could wait until the final version of the game released and buy that one to get everything instead of how it is nowadays where you have to buy the base game then the characters no matter how much you wait.

This is a reason why I won't play 'online' games at all without serious research first and won't let my single player games update automatically when I doubt the publisher any more. I want my game to just work without having to phone home, and not be forever updating in ways you can't reverse so they can shovel in the bovine excrement after you get invested in the game. Some games, studios and publishers convince me enough - Deep Rock Galactic being one that the game can stand on its own, it even is still enjoyable in singleplayer which is kind of bonkers for a game so heavily into CO-OP as a core mechanic... But on the whole I have given up on most modern games as well.

Woah, this turned into quite the wall of text, but this really hit a nerve and maybe you want to bear with me. I am turning 50 this year and I will never stop being a gamer. I grew up in the GDR and I got my first gaming device, namely an old C64 (first generation, fondly called 'Brotkasten/Breadbox' here in Germany), relatively late after the wall fell and I immediately fell in love with the technology, the idea/concept of computer games, of course, games. Then came the Amiga 500, christened 'die Freundin/the girlfriend, by german gamers. I was quite proud of mine, with a connectible memory expansion that brought my Amiga to a whopping _2.3 Mb_ memory, can you believe that? I still have that thing on my shelf, btw. And yes, gaming and the state of gaming industry nowadays sucks, big time. I don't even need to watch your video, because I know exactly what you are going to say. I have said the same things a bazillion times before myself. And you know what hurts the most? Not the unimaginable greed, the fact that you don't own games you've bought anymore, not crap like Day-1 DLC, not microtransactions, FOMO, always-online policy for singleplayer games, games being released broken and gamers being squeezed like lemons... but that generations younger than me will never know better times, that this is _normal_ for them. And even worse, that it were _gamers_ who allowed this development. Seriously, it's our own fault, _we_ allowed it to happen. When Steam went online, I was sceptical. I was asking if that would not meant we don't own games anymore and people laughed at me. I was sceptical when this fat f*ck Gaben claimed that games would become cheaper now, since we cut out the middle man. But nooo, Steam was the hot sh*t. And I can't help to laugh when the same morons who laughed at me back then now celebrate garbage like Epic, because it would supposedly 'break Steam's monopoly' by... creating a monopoly by bribing the soul out of devs and publishers with CCP money. What a sad, bloody joke. There is still a screenshot on my HD that shows so perfectly what is wrong with _gamers,_ not gaming. It shows a Steam group called 'Boycott MW 3' on the release date of MW 3. Now guess _what_ almost all of them were playing... I could ramble of for hours, but we all see and know all that is wrong with gaming and the industry nowadays. But the point is, why should this make me stop loving and playing computer games? Why would that make me stop being a gamer? In a way this would mean giving up on what is a profound part of my personality and I will _not_ do that. It would mean giving up on playing Minecraft with my little niece. It would mean giving up on what brings me down after another horrid nightshift from hell as a nurse in the failing german healthcare system. It would mean, giving up on something that _still_ gives me pleasure. With my age, I have the advantage of having known other, better times and that I do not fall for every hype of FOMO and although this won't save gaming, it helps being a lot more level-headed. But this is also true when it comes to the idea of giving up on this hobby. So I don't really own the games I buy on Steam anymore, true, but... so what? I understand Steam as rental service now and I almost exclusively buy games dirt cheap during sales or from key resellers. It would hurt if Valve decided to take my account from me and I would be p...eeved beyond believe for some time, but the damage would be limited. And of course there are ways to buy games on Steam and then still play them offline and without the need of having Steam running. And of course I still have this immense -pile of shame- backlog of games waiting to be played and of games that I still play time and again even decades after their release. I still have lots of CDs and DVDs with games that don't need Steam or whatever. Damn, I have my Amiga emulator and I still play games released for the Amiga. And since I might be a _tad_ crazy in that regard, I still have a 360 and a PS3 here, with tons of games for those consoles as well and yes, I still use both of them as well. I look at games like Diablo 4 and I honestly don't care anymore. This is not what 'gaming' means for me, this is a bloody hamster wheel, a money making scheme with some nice graphics slapped onto the surface and I realise, I feel nothing at the thought of missing out on that. If this is what 'stopping to be a gamer' means, then yes, I have stopped being a gamer. But I doubt that, because the passion and the enthusiasm for that medium is still there. The love for games is still there. The joy when I play computer games with my nieces and nephews is still there. And I will be damned if I will allow some greedy bastards without even a spark of love and passion for games and without a spark of decency to take that away from me. And yes, will keep playing and celebrating games and gaming with my nieces and nephews _and_ I will give them something to take along at this occasion. I teach them to not fall for every hype, I teach them what to look out for, I explain to them how hype and FOMO work. I can't protect them from everything, but I can sure as hell give them some tools to protect themselfes while _still_ enjoying this awesome hobby. Well, I could say a lot more, but this rant is already long enough, so I will stop here. And in case you've actually made it this far, thanks a lot for your interest and patience. :)

I feel like games now are: -Cut every corner, if it doesnt look like a circle, we're doing it wrong guys! -Lay off devs, hire more marketing/sales. -Plenty of free games sell mtx, but lets charge FULL PRICE. Then also shove in: --BATTLE PASS HURDUR. --COSMETICS. --INDIVIDUAL CONTENT. --EXPANSIONS. --INGAME CURRENCY. Gaming these days is legitimately just predatory, shitty, mobile games ported to pc.

For sure applies to big publishers and multiplayer games. Still a lot to love in the oldies and indies.

You used to get a full game Now at release you get a trial with DLC planned before release and the game might not even work for the first couple months So you can get the full experience of the game for like 3 months before the next edition is released (if you wait for the DLC and buy a bundle)

Nrs did worst. Character Rain was dlc in MK9 left out in mkx and dlc again mk11. Then with character mileena she was base roster in mk9 and mkx but dlc in mk11. Like wut....

Indie games are pretty great, and it feels cool to support actual people rather than a group of faceless investors. Madness Project Nexus is what I'm on right now and it's amazing.

This is where I am right now. I miss how games were in the 90s, everything is politicized and full of microtransactions now.

Every aspect of life has become work. People have become delusional into expecting you to fight every battle you come across. People are expected to fight but at the right times. Humans are not meant to fight 24/7. Hell work is not even just problem solving. It's that and also fighting off an army of enemies. You can't do both. Humans are not meant to fight every battle.

the worst part is, they'll even start a game with no micro-transactions only to put them in at a later date

As a gamer who has been one since the 80s, starting all the way back with Atari and MSX, the thing is - if you don't care a whole ton about games anymore, I don't think you need to force yourself to be one, particularly given how complex it has become. And it's pretty hard to get in if you are used to what it was back in the 90s. At the same time, I have to say that while what Louis is describing is definitely true for a chunk of the industry... it's also not true for any of the modern gaming I personally do. I never got into microtransactions, massive multiplayer games, games that try to nick and dime you all the time, pre-orders, and a bunch of this newer crap. And I still have way more games to play than time to go at it. Thing is, the gaming industry is extremely oversaturated these days. To the point that you don't have to go for games of these big studios to have fun, you don't have to play triple A titles, you don't have to fall into these predatory practices. You do have to care enough to look for stuff that don't participate in these though... though this is true to pretty much any form of entertainment you chose to go for. But I also think it's a bit of rose tinted nostalgia glasses too. I mean, let's admit some stuff here. For instance, yes, the joycon drift crap is pretty egregious, but it's not like we didn't have all sorts of problems in older consoles and gamepads in the past too. The NES with bad contact pads and blowing on cartridges, Playstation 1 laser head problems, XBox 360 RRoD, Nintendo DS snapping the screen ribbon connector at the hinge... there were plenty of design faults and problems, we just tend to overlook those overtime, or even become fond of it, or make fun of it. And we had to do some level of research on games in the past too, because there were so many crappy titles. xD I still remember some huge deceptions I had in the far past... the Dragon's Lair NES game, Mickey Mousecapade, some other crap I waited an entire year to get a game on my birthday and it was pure sh*t. xD Nowadays I have a thousand or more long Steam backlog, several games I know are good, I got them at steep discounted prices, but I don't have enough time to play them. :P But again, it's all about what you want to do with the limited leisure time you have.

I agree with your points Louis, but the game series chosen doesn't illustrate your point. Street Fighter has come a long way since Alpha 3. Let me break down why I think it makes sense. First, new Street Fighter games, at launch, come with all the characters unlocked. You get exactly what you paid for right out of the gate. The characters that come later, are a part of paid expansion packs that come after release. These characters are mostly worked on after the launch of the game. In addition, Capcom provides balance updates for free, regardless if the player purchases character expansions or not. Also, Capcom provides direct support to it's competitive scene via organized tournaments and money. The next Capcom Cup will have a 2 Million Dollar Prize Pool. Compare this to Alpha 3. If a player wanted the most up to date of that game, and get the new characters as they came out, they had to purchase multiple copies of the game, and even different hardware to support the last release of Alpha 3 on PSP.

I'm so jaded with gaming, its one of my favorite hobbies yet its so easy to get fucked by these development companies. Tears of the Kingdom is the first game in awhile that I've felt its a complete game. There are standouts of course but most games now are half-baked money grabs.