Why Video Games Aren't Fun Anymore: A Response 

It's not that indies are better. They are mostly just hobo triple-A in that the scene has turned into the same trend chasing but without the budget. You either buy triple-A open worlds / 8h cutscene walking sims or indie 2D pixelvomit roguelites / platformers. Both spectrums have become stale. Elden Ring and Re4make gave me that good old feeling and they are both big budget games. Better than the 2000th metroidvania / Slay the Spire clone

Exactly, I enjoyed more old games from old console and smartphone game mostly... Just for fun and relaxing game.

​@@xNachtmahRx To be honest, I think that's because you have a variant of the problem OP was talking about. If you think the indie scene is just walking sims/metroidvanias/roguelikes, then that's because you haven't explored any further beyond those genres.

*We have a saying in Germany: What the Farmer does not know, he does not eat ;)*

@@rikterterran3833true

Yes I play almost exclusively older games or indie arcade games these days

Another problem people have now in our days with social media and game reviews and global opinions etc is that they forget we are different. I fell into that trap a few times. You hear a game being praised back and forth and you just have to try it and even though you don't find enjoyment you think there is something wrong with you because everyone says the game is awesome so you push yourself to play certain game and ruin your enjoyment. Then a game many think is trash just hooks you up and you feel guilty for devoting hours and enjoying yourself. You should just play what you enjoy. It doesn't matter if everyone says a game is the masterpiece of the century. If you aren't feeling it just throw it away and play that thing others think is silly but puts a smile on your face.

Eh, it won’t disappear. You’re living in a fantasy world. Anyone with half a brain and understanding of ratio and statistics understands this basic concept. How you feel about the problem is fixed from your island: yes. And that’s all that matters. But to say that the problem “disappears” is just intellectually lazy, ignorance based in stupidity or straight up a lie.

This is essentially me. I stopped playing a lot of the new games in the early 00s. Eventually played some of the CoDs, Battlefields, Far Crys, etc. But we had Medal of Honor in 90s. We had Time Splitters, Goldeneye, Doom, etc. I grew up playing a lot of FPS and it just became boring after a while. Certainly played other games and genres but I was trying to keep up with the new stuff like so many people in the early 00s when that generation of gaming was really taking off. Seems like now all the really popular games are just reskins of other games, whether they be series sequels or just clones of other popular games. Got into retro games a little bit around 2007 and then again in 2012. Even now I'm still finding "new" old games that I never played or hadn't thought of in a long time, mostly thanks to channels like Electric Underground.

omg, back then, I loved gaming. Gaming was at its peak. I mean there were so many games from aaa developers that were great.... yes there were some games that had day 1 patches but at the same time, you could really just put a game in and it would work. I also miss cartrige based games.

they really did, slowly but surely. And it happened across so many franchises too. There used to be a time when ubi soft and blizzard made cool games (many decades ago), but now all of their franchises are pure bloat. Damn assassin's creed and WOW were the turning points.

They are a brainwashing tool made by globalist and the military industrial complex.

Strange thing is i always liked cinematic games. I was a big fan of Meta Gear Solid, Silent Hill games and Final Fantasy games on PS1 and PS2. At those times those where the cinematic games. And yet even me that was a fan of that genre think that the newest God of War games lost that arcade fun in fighting and didn't feel much enjoyment from The last of US 2 etc. I was even the guy that liked reading all the dialogues and immerse himself into the story but now in many games i just want the characters to just stop talking, i am like "God not Again". Especially felt that while playing Horizon 2. I didn't care what they were saying. I wanted everyone to shut up including the main character and let me jump and fight dinosaur robots. As a fan of cinematic games my favored game that had cinematic atmosphere on PS5 was Kena: Bridge of Spirits. Other than that it was actually the little robot game it came with instead of some big title. So what does that mean? I don't know. Maybe is not just about being a cinematic game but doing it right.

​@@SIPEROTH Sony games are all boring and badly written which makes them more insufferable to go through.

My wife bought the PS4 when it came out and I never really liked it until a few years ago. There are a lot of great re-releases coming out and I use my PS4 for streaming and playing some retro games that might be unaffordable otherwise (also have them on PC). I think the last new game I played was Sekiro but it's certainly a grind and is a time waster for sure.

@@SIPEROTH Those games were cinematic in a different way IMO. It was a in a videogame centric way--fixed camera angles, focus on ambiance and aesthetics, slow-moving levels that set up scenes, etc. Devil May Cry and Resident Evil are other examples of this. Those games are cinematic as hell but they don't beat you over the head with MUH EPIC STORY like modern God of War or Rockstar games do. They're way more subtle and focused on what videogames do well over film.

Indies have their own problems and honestly have a big problem with people overrating them.

I will immediately dismiss any game that has a crafting system. Not the RE style mix this herb with that herb, but the “collect 50 of this item, 80 of that item, have this weapon and mix it with another weapon and get a slightly better new weapon.” Waste of time.

that's absolutely right galaxy, I touched on that a bit but I could have expanded more on that point because I do think it's important. Because everything is the same and built the same, it has two nasty outcomes. The first is that you just burn out more cuz there is no variety at all. The second though, is that you become too rigid in your taste and too adverse to new challenges, so that when a new challenge comes along (final vendetta) you just lobby the devs to make the game easier ha. Who needs skill when you have social media.

funny how this has been going on since 2010, you just described Far Cry 3. which back in the day had me thinking the exact same as you.

@@magicjohnson3121 no one said all indie games were good but the point is there's alot more creativity in indie games than aaa games.... maybe aside from Nintendo.

that is true mishiko, but that comes with a trade-off for the dedicated players like ourselves. Sure the volume of players is probably higher than ever, but to increase the volume there is some sacrifice that often needs to be made in terms of quality and design. Hang tight because we will very very likely see this play out with dark souls, which will add easy modes at some point for this very reason based on this logic. Artistically though, if your games becomes everything to all people, then what actually distinguishes it from other games? Very little I'd say.

Something like Days Gone that's probably true. But I'd say that, as Mark said, a majority of even people who would identify as "gamers" want to play cinematic snooze fests, not arcade games of any stripe.

@@TheElectricUnderground Souls will never have an easy mode, you dont know much about Fromsoft if you think this is ever going to happen. Its been over 15 years, if Souls hasnt gotten an easy mode beyond what its already always had (Make a good build and the games aren't that hard) it isn't going to get one now. I promise you. Fromsoft has been making these games harder with each new one with a continual rejection of easy modes.

@@TheElectricUndergroundfollowing this up a year later to say that it’s interesting that FromSoft seems to have gone the total opposite direction - their last two releases, Armored Core 6 and Shadow of the Erdtree, are some of their most obtuse and difficult games yet lol

Yeah I particularly am weary of MMOs for that reason. Not only do MMOs use the strategy of the slow content drip (an endless one as I understand), but they also have this social aspect to them that can be good initially, but can degrade into a more legit addiction in the end (since we are so heavily hooked by social incentives). It's like codependency at times I think, which is harsh but can happen.

You've definitely touched on something that I think deserves more attention, games being some kind of motivational prophylaxis (medicine). I have definitely found that playing games can provide a sense of focus and motivation which can be leveraged towards completing (arguably) more significant tasks, yet there's a risk of the game itself becoming the central task which expends the motivation, therefore nullifying its entire (supposed) purpose. Essentially, addiction... like Mark covers here. I have definitely experienced emptiness once a game is no longer rewarding to me, made worse when juxtaposed with my real-life ambitions and doubts. I can tell myself it was an experience, a beautiful expression of art and not a waste of time...which may be true enough, yet the emptiness lingers. As an artist working to develop a portfolio of sound design and music for games, it's ironic that these feelings can legitimately inhibit my capacity to be interested in the games which serve as the inspiration (medicine) to drive a real world motivation to make music for games! "I'm groggy and unmotivated, but wish I wasn't so I could work on game music. So, I need a hit of games to spark my motivation. But, this game seems pointless. Wait, so why am I interested in making music for something pointless? Maybe I should do something legit like build houses in Africa or something..." Ad infinitum. But I think this spiralling theory is just that. Fortunately the world is not so black and white, and we can see and think about these things and enact behaviour based on higher level realizations, so the lever we are pressing can be one of continued self-realization (growth itself) rather than blind addiction. For now, most of us have better prospects than coked up rats in a cage.

That's exactly how I feel recently. I played a lot of Guilty Gear Strive last year and when I hit heaven it first felt like I achieved something. But a couple of days later I wondered if I should not have spent all those time and effort on my other goals in life like exercising or studying languages. So at least for me this achievements often come with a slightly bitter taste of mismanaging my time.

Yea buts what the difference between gaming and drawing lol. Especially if they make you feel the same way as you say.

@@Laocoon283 For me art skill's more transferable & practically useful (for the stuff I wanna do anyway) and socially appreciated than stuff like 1cc's hence more productive. It's a short term vs long term feeling kinda thing, short term they're the same, long term it's pretty different

@boghogSTG Very good and honest take coming from a gamedev. What you said makes a lot of sense. Now, how do we strike the balance of using gaming to push ourselves, grow and get a little accomplishment without over investing into it on the back of more important things… I guess it requires a very intentional and reflective approach. Setting a reasonable challenge that hits the sweet spot of not creating too much of a time/ energy sink while still pushing one mentally to learn and improve and be in a focussed state. I think the emphasis in STG on super players or even 1CC becomes a problem when approaching it like this because for the harder games all clears quickly become too much of a time sink. I’m thinking about establishing smaller goals for myself depending on a game. 3CC can be an awesome achievement FOR ME in some games or even a level clear in a shottrigger practice mode. And then I have to track my playtime and what I get out of it / how I feel after playing to re-assess whether that goals actually make sense or I’m wasting my time. Anyway, I ended up rambling a bit here… but it is an interesting thing to think about 😊

I agree completely about the ps2 era. It is a beautiful middle ground and funnily enough I have a bunch of ps2 stuff I am going to talk about this year (including godhand). What an awesome era for gaming my friend. That was when AAA studios were at their best imo.

I love the PS2 era because games that were hard then weren't incessantly obsessed with being hard, they just were. The point back then was just being a good game and I think that makes a big difference.

I love the PS2 era because games that were hard then weren't incessantly obsessed with being hard, they just were. The point back then was just being a good game and I think that makes a big difference.

@@TheElectricUnderground best console exclusives ever! Quality, quantity, AND variety.

I try to keep that balance as well. I think that is really important but not something many gaming youtubers want to admit. I also personally try to exercise everyday and having that balancing force of an alternate form of stimulation really helps offset the burn out factor of playing games. It also simply cuts into gaming time that can help you be more moderate about spending hours unchecked (which I am prone to if I'm not careful).

Yeah Sgt I've had the same experience over the past decade as well. And it's not because I want to be some kind of hipster about it. It's just the shift in how games are designed and paced has been drawn out, and then the drawn out model has been so standardized, that I feel like games have been locking me out rather than the other way around. I just do not have the capacity to sit down with these plodding experiences anymore, especially when there is such an extensive backlog of older classics that I can access. I do still enjoy indie arcade games though.

Same age. Same attitude. Cut scenes? Narrative? Wandering around? Please. No time or inclination for that. Arcade style for me usually. The quick but dense, deep hit. With games, like anything.....films, books, exercise, hobbies.......you get out what you put in. Consume homogenised slurry and it will keep you alive but you wont get any joy out of it

Dude, 53 here and have loved the new god of war and stray!!! Also revisiting the PS3 and enjoying it. But nothing will ever match the high I got when I first played the Atari, it was like a whole new world. But I really am enjoying video games at this age. Shmups, fighters and action games. There is more choice now than ever before.

@@Salamander407 there are great modern games...no doubt about that, but if you don't challenge yourself the novelty wears off. Too many game producers are frustrated film makers. I mean that sort of thing has its place but it just isnt for me.

Most modern AAA games = The Walking Dead Seasons 2 and 3 which was like 20 hours of boring stupid filler just to artificially take up time. Classic gaming = Tom Savini's 1990 Night of the Living Dead remake which gets right to it and concludes it in quick fashion and doesn't bore us with stupid filler bs.

I'm glad you picked up on the soma reference lex. Yes I think mainstream entertainment (streaming, video games, even films now) have taken on this soma quality to them. Where they are digestible and plentiful, but how meaningful are they really? Players (and especially youtubers) absolutely hop from game to game on this massive chugging wave. One interesting way to see this play out with real data is steam stats. Just look at the steam stats for example of a game that I think is pretty solid cyber shadow - it's just this massive slope downward (only 7 people playing it currently).

@@TheElectricUnderground man you’re right, how many times recently have we seen games hit astonishing concurrent player numbers on release, only to be declared dead by the playerbase within a short time? How many TV series have people streamed over the last couple of years where they barely remember but a couple of scenes, if that? Keep up the good work man, your videos are therapeutic for us out here!

But only playing the old games you played many times before could be more described as being addicted imo

@@HieronymousLex reason is, as you get older you retain less information and have too much on your mind. Also, as a teen we all watched the movies and shows we loved many times. So of course we remembered them. I once watched a movie 2 years ago, had strong sense of deja vu only to realise glhalfway througj i had already watched that movie.. lol

You are right on. Just got a PS5 and playing God of war and stray but also revisiting the PS3 era by playing vanquish and fear 3 and the uncharted series. Having a great time.

Use the custom arcade mode. There are lots of options, and you can really tailor your experience to your liking.

@FractalCactusFGC Thank you for the suggestion. Will do! 👍🙏

Dash you get it. Exactly. If the easy mode is too easy, then you actually have no way to learn the harder lessons of the arcade mode and you ironically end up getting trapped in super easy. Easy modes should specifically help players graduate out of them into arcade, I think.

@@pacificdash I actually find super easy on a Cave game harder than normal on something like a Raiden.

@@futureskeletons66669 whoah super interesting. I find classic Raiden to be almost the hardest style of shmup I’ve ever encountered. I love to see how differently people experience these things. Thanks for the info!

Yeah mingo I think that's an important point because a lot of people will say its devs fault, its companies fault (which it is to some degree) but also consumer habits talk. So if players are all responding to these massive plodding bloat fest games, and that is what they are buying, then of course that is what devs are going to make.

That second, and third sentence are quite a stretch.

yes and every time I think the mainstream critics are starting to make some progress, we get the final vendetta 1cc example where none of the critics defended the 1cc arcade mode requirement choice (I did, but I'm not mainstream). It's sort of a classic example of as much as players complain that they want the devs to "challenge" them and so forth, they really don't because they will bounce at the idea of a 1cc requirement. Especially since, all things considered, 1ccing final vendetta on normal is not that hard to do ha.

People have been calling Fromsoft games “inaccessible, unreasonable, and off-putting” for years now…

I agree :-) I'll try to figure out a way to say this that doesn't sound like a self help book, but two people can do the same activity and based on how they interpret the activity and what motivates them, the result can be very different. Like in college i used to bitterly hate helping with the dishes (I was fairly spoiled growing up), but after some thought I changed my attitude to doing the dishes was an excuse to listen to podcasts and music and it shifted my experience completely. Again self help stuff, but still true.

At our best we are complete and whole within ourselves. A self sustaining island. (So they tell me.)

What if i do both?

Oh yes there is still a wealth of games coming out worth playing with quality gameplay, like I covered in my last top 10 video. However, what I think is interesting to consider is that for some gamers, who are feeling burned out, these games are actually not that interesting to them because they are not looking for dense challenging games. They are looking for that real tasty morphine drip of moderately challenging games that slowly build over a long period of time. And problem with that area of gaming is that all of these types of games have become so similar to one another that the variety between titles has diminished.

You're touching on a much larger problem in society: people expect to have reliable information served to them on a silver platter. We saw it in the whole "covid" farce, "global warming," endless political BS, and we see it in gaming, too: people just expect that the main media sites, TV, and social media are going to serve them the correct and useful information or at least not greatly mislead them. But what lever of power would ever go unexplained?

*unexploited (damn autocorrect)

I think the meaning of gaming is connected to difficulty. I think a game creating a challenge + a goal is what is specifically meaningful to the medium. You are battling against a system of rules created by another person, which is very interesting and i think can be meaningful, especially when combined in a social setting. But today's games are so permissive and diluted that you don't get the challenge or even the goal, it's just an endless treadmill of passive entertainment.

I do get that but I think you underestimate yourself. The problem with super easy mode, as opposed to a solid novice mode (which I am more inclined to recommend) is that the super easy mode doesn't give you the tools to push into the regular arcade mode, wheareas a really solid novice mode live in Gunvein or CCWE can do that. The way shmups work, in my expereince, is that you get absolutely owned by them at first, but in that experience you start to wire in those failures more directly rather than a very gradual ease in method. I think even a guy in his sixites can absolutely pick up the genre and get into the arcade modes. So I would say in your case try out the arcade mode for a few weeks, knowing you will get smacked around. But in that process of getting smacked around you will actually learn much more quickly and I do think the genre will start to click together :-)

Mark, how old are you? I think YOU underestimate aging.

Terrible take, you have 40+ years old japanese salarymen and fathers who are still grinding Super Turbo after all these years at the highest level. You aren't to a point where your skills would take a sharp dive. I think you just are unhealthy.

I can never stoop to easy settings. It always feels like cheaping out even if the game is too much for me and I have to move on.

Not to dump on you older chaps, but I’m almost 45 and my reaction time is more than adequate. 1CC’s are not an issue. Stamina and time available, yes those are issues. But you can train your reaction time to be functionally as good as ever. You can still build muscle and do difficult problem solving. I’m not special and I don’t have to perform as an Olympic athlete here. You’re giving up. By the way I got into shmups at 35 and sucked for 1 year straight, then got a lag less setup and realized I didn’t quite suck as much as I thought. Small ego boost and I was off to the races. Don’t give up dudes, it’s mostly BS, I assure you!

I agree. There's so much to explore with gaming in particular, and super great to try out new experiences. It's very easy to get tunnel vision on what's popular or worth our time based on public opinions, reviews or whatever. You do you and have fun. Games are made to have fun and escape for a while, not to take super seriously in a negative sense at least. Also breaks help immensely with general burnout too.

The gaming community today is weird in that even a lot of people who enjoy games, mainly the more casual people who make up the bulk of consumers, often have a negative view of more hardcore fans, who were probably the main audience at one point. That's not even getting into the whole culture war that things have turned into over the past decade.

Could not agree more and the fact that the game forces you to play at a higher than usual difficulty is an important artistic choice I think, it s one of the elements that makes the game stand out

While Dark Souls isn't an "easy" game, I don't think it is the difficulty that gives it that incredibly oppressive game feel. Instead it is the punishment you receive for dying and the risk vs. reward system for keeping souls (and even humanity if you play a Chaos build). Later Souls games have even harder bosses, but they shower you with bonfires and it really loses what makes Demons' and Dark Souls 1 so special.

Walking through the mist into a new area is a great feeling.

yes ironically a fantastic site, but for the opposite reason most people use it lol

Yes, I hope that point came across in the video. The line between playing games for enjoyment and fun and playing games to avoid problems and feelings that you should be mindful of is pretty thin, so it's always good to identify what's motivating your play time. I think feeling burned out on games is a pretty good sign something is going on.

yeah on the nuero-chemicals and rat stuff, I promise I'm not trying to be sneaky but I meant most that stuff in a literary sense as an analogy, rather than like I'm giving an exact breakdown of all the neurology involved. I recalled all the rat experiment stuff from psych classes in college and yeah when i was backtracking through abstracts for the video of course there's like a pile of all these rat studies arguing with eachother lol. So don't take the rat analogy too seriously as i don't believe that games are actually chemically addictive like cocaine, it's more just a useful analogy. So what I'm getting at is that gaming in isolation in place of other reward systems is naturally going to lead to more burnout, as opposed to gaming selectively as an addition to your life is going to be more healthy. So that vaguely lines up with the rat park analogy, but again don't take the psychology aspect of it too seriously.

exactly DJ, so to keep the feeling fresh you want to have other sources of stimulation and try not to get sucked into the modern endless gameplay loop. Arcade hit and quit is the way to go lol.

Thanks so much my dude!! I'm looking forward to playing more ketsui this year as well

@@TheElectricUnderground how is the finishing touches on Shmuparch 8 ?

Yeah How Long To Beat is so dumb, but it is a useful symptom of the larger problem, so I kind of like it for that reason.

There where plenty of difficult console games before renting really took off and that doesn't explain pc games, that people couldn't rent. There are clearly signs of deliberate artificial difficulty spikes, but that was to get people to buy, not re-rent games. Sega and Virgin come to mind, when it comes to games being easy for 85% of a game only to have an absolute crazy difficulty spike at the end or some deliberately obtuse and confusing objective/criteria near the end. I believe a higher up at Sega actually talked about making arcade games that couldn't be beaten/nearly impossible and something similar was referenced in "The Wizard", though for the Genesis not arcades. And of course there's this non-sense: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-0mn-4y8YrU4.html

yeah pix this is a really interesting question because I think we all view games like this. I can't see myself paying full price for a lot of shmup releases except the shottrigger ports. I think what seperates the shottrigger ports is that they are 1: extremely high quality ports of classics of the genre, and 2: there is a ton of extras and features that other devs don't typically have. So when it comes to arcade games, i do think it is possible to justify a full price, but that requires a very very robust package full of extras and new modes and stuff like that. I do think production value factors in as well and I think that's probably why we all are willing to pay higher for AAA games. Because even if the gameplay experience is meh, the production value justifies the price tag. I'd love to see shmups and arcade games coming out with really high end graphics and stuff.

If you need to enjoy the story to be engrossed in them just watch it on RU-vid

exactly ps3, Elden ring is a good example. I had a lot of fun with the game and it is one of the few mainstream releases I have enjoyed, but the sheer volume of the game is basically impossible to get through with my schedule. Elden ring abridged please lol. And in the past a game like elden ring would be like 3-4 hours, now it's over a dozen just to get cooking.

@@magicjohnson3121 yeah no

Same experience and saves you money

​@@magicjohnson3121 If a super-easy mode is a different experience, how is just watching it on RU-vid not a different experience?

Videogames are a lot more fun as an adult. As a child I was able to understand 1% of a game's themes and mechanics, but now that I'm in my late 20s I can delve deep into them and be truly be immersed in the setting and achieve higher levels of gameplay. It's such a waste that I was still a child when arcades were common, I would have enjoyed them so much more if their time was today.

@@nautilus2612 I kind of agree with you. I definitely understand games better now. But it's a very different feeling from when I was a kid. Maybe BECAUSE you don't understand them as a kid there's this feeling of nervous excitement. I wonder if that's part of the reason for these "games aren't fun anymore" takes -- they're just remembering when it felt new instead of something that became a hobby.

“What I don't understand is, why isn't gaming being compared to doing things like reading novels, going to movies, plays, concerts, etc.?” Because you play them and they’re interactive ( if you play Sony games that might be hard to believe) Also more addictive. Just play an MMO. I mean people were getting divorced over world of craft. Why not sport? Because it’s a lot more physically demanding. You can be some obese unhealthy dude and be good at video games. Try winning the soccer World Cup with a bunch of obese dudes. Video games are their own thing. You have to be delusional to think it’s equivalent to every other hobby.

Yeah you need to take a break sometimes

Yeah I've been there myself as well dart. One year when I was having a hard time I played metal gear solid 3 over and over for months ha. I beat the game like 10 times or something. Games have an effect on the mind that can be a good thing (a nice fun boost or social activity) but can also be used as a way to avoid other thoughts and tasks that maybe your mind does need to deal with rather than suppress.

Well said.

yeah cannot go wrong with arcade releases that is for sure. There is some cool newer stuff that still comes out, but they tend to be smaller releases that sneak under the radar.

Iga is doing a 3rd curse of the moon? I thought they were going to make ritual of the night 2

@@lazorsbear7068 inticreates is. It's called Grim Guardians demon purge. It doesn't have the same characters or license, but the gameplay is pretty much curse of the moon 3. I can't wait for bazooka babe blowup.

Thank you very much Kyo! Yeah there's a few games in the mainstream I am looking forward too this year, tentatively. but the most part I just have to rely on indie arcade games for that sweet good gameplay ha.

tactics ogre reborn.

@@kyokusagani8869 Grim Guardians is a Galgun Spinoff and has nothing to do with Curse of the Moon.

I do that all the time riggel lol. I was just sitting and playing gungrave a week ago till 3 AM and had work at 8:30 AM and said to myself "you dirty game junkie." ha.

@@TheElectricUnderground ahh...You have discovered the curse of the hardcore. Found myself driving home at midnight after a few beers and a street fighter tournament couple weeks ago-got a gorilla on my back.

Have u ever played metal gear solids?

ha yeah I think part of that though stems from if you primarily play mainstream games and all the games are the same and doing the same thing, it probably feels like an endless treadmill of mediocrity.

@@diydylana3151 Yes. If playing video games is no longer fun to you, time to consider another hobby.

@@TheElectricUnderground yea the same formulaic engagement/marketing game designs burn these guys out. then they blame "gaming" instead of looking outside of AAA and multiplayer threadmill grinds. stupid.

If you let the Leah Lipps phenotype suck you up you will become aware

That's awesome to hear! Yeah they reach out and grab very quickly, most other genres have a much slower burn to get things going - which can feel like wasted time to me.

Yeah the saturation is a nasty feedback loop, which i hope my video sort of outlined (sometimes it's hard to tell how clear I am being with some of these abstract ideas). Where players crave the same steady stream of low-impact content. Developers supply that stream. Players become habituated to it, and so to get their lift they need more and more, which the devs are only too happy to supply. This is how you get these insane releases like GTA 5 where the game has not stopped putting out content for a decade, but none of the content is at all meaningful. It's insane and a huge opportunity cost for everyone.

If you let the Leah Lipps phenotype suck you up you will become aware

Yeah these are all really great insights onto the reason players get burned out. I think another one is the lack of meaning in gaming these days. Where since mainstream games don't challenge the player and cause struggle, then mostly what the player is doing is either passively doodling mechanics or watching a very very drawn out tv series or film (in the game). For me challenge + goals is what creates meaning within the genre. If you don't have a goal, and you don't have challenge, it is hard to figure out where the appeal comes from -- unless you really are playing games as a choose your own adventure TV show.

it's better than the outside world and what people class as normal. Don't believe it! most people are miserable as sin no matter what they have in life 👍

Yeah it also takes the sweetness out of the experience as well. I've known a lot of guys (including an old friend) who used gaming as such a heavy crutch that now, after missing out on so much of life, there is this darker sad relationship between themselves and gaming. Games can be great and even meaningful experiences, but when they add to your life rather than replacing it. Thanks for the awesome comment my friend :-)

If you let the Leah Lipps phenotype suck you up you will become aware

Glad you enjoyed the vid Diego!

yeah it's so hard to find modern games that just aren't clogged full of plodding boring filler, which I frankly cannot get through.

There are new PS5 games such as Returnal and Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart that absolutely provide that instant quality hit, and don't overstay their welcome.

That is true, battle of the addicts lol

Short terms goals are great! I do the same thing. For example this year my short term goal is to complete the ketsui omote. Because of this goal, when I sit down to play shmups I have a purpose and something to reach for, rather than just ticking away time. The goal and the challenge are what create meaning.

@@TheElectricUnderground Exactly my thought process. I need goals with anything to keep any kind of engagement. Even if I have to make my own strange goals, it keeps the fire burning for me. I can say that with more experience gameplay really is KING for me. Like you said about gameplay dense games. Nothing really impresses anymore, so tastes change. Always loved great gameplay though.

Honestly Melvin I think our generation (I'm 31 but also grew up on arcade games) are simply lucky. Younger generations of gamers missed out on such a compelling and challenging era of video game design and the games they are exposed to today are plodding, boring, and effortless. So I do think there is a legit generational divide on our experience vs younger players experiences with the medium. My younger brother, for example, started gaming on the PS3 and now he hardly ever plays because to him gaming really has not changed or improved (he plays fps) his entire life. It's crazy if you think about it.

Carnage Heart OST -The Melody of Iron Static Pressure Zeus Carnage Heart Second (1998)

I had this same issue with elden ring Kamadoma. Where I started off really digging the game and having fun with it (I do think it is a good one) but the sheer volume of the game makes it impossible to seriously consider playing through. The bandwidth simply is not there.

And it's funny because this "argument" works better in the opposite way. If you only have one hour of free time each day, then you'll get a much more exciting experience with something like a shmup than an empty overworld.

@@bulb9970 if we don't account for the motor skills required to not immediately blow up on stage 2-3 with nothing tangible to show for time invested, as opposed to an open world with ajustable difficulty and dophamine completion percentages. Though it's much harder to remember what you were doing since the last session, yes

Not trying to self promote but I wanted to say I finally followed up and made my video about this topic too. Have a great day Mark