Comment by gfxgirl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gfxgirl | Hacker News Reader

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I'm mixed on this. I grew up with games, similar age as you. I haven't completely stopped but I'm down to a 2-3 games a year. Why? Because they are all the same damn game!!! FPS # 12446, 2D side scroller # 692134, Yet another twin stick shooter, Yet another shmups, Yet another Metroidvania, etc... They aren't changing enough to hold my interest.

Even games that seem "new" don't feel new. I played "Baba is You". Got maybe 50 levels in. It did have new ideas but at its core it felt like I was playing Adventures of Lolo NES from the mid 80s.

VR has added "presence" and being in new places feels novel as well as using hands instead of joypads but there's so few good well made titles and I'm sure that novelty will wear off as well.

I've tried to compare this to movies and TV. I'm not tired of movies and TV. I think the biggest difference is games are about the game, movies and TV are about the story. Games can have good stories but the majority are pretty crap and generally the more story the less game. I don't generally play for the story.

Have you tried Disco Elisium, by any chance? I'm in a very similar position - despite spending my whole professional life in gamedev, I'm mostly disillusioned in games right now. Especially from story perspective: too many titles seem to be written with the same old tropes targeted at teens, at best.

But among all the games that tried to challenge this in the last 10-15 years, Disco Elisium did it the best. It's not just a good story in a shape of a game: it's a very engaging gameplay, built very organically around a story and it's world and characters.

There's a reason this obscure indie game from a no-name Polish studio swept the video game awards. This the only game I've A) ever recommended to other people unprompted B) finished, then immediately started a new game.

> Polish studio

ZA/UM is absed in Estonia.

Maybe that's an ancillary point to that of the article. Games aren't near being fully explored as a medium, and both storyline and gameplay elements have a huge space of potential that hasn't been explored yet.

It's promising that there's many indie games that really push the frontiers of the gaming experiences one can have. E.g. This War of Mine and Firewatch were really big experiences for me, in terms of what stories a game can tell while being quite novel on the gameplay front.

I recently played 'Everyone's Gone To The Rapture' - for a lot of people it's not enough of a 'game' for them, but from a story point of view it's really engaging. Once the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've ever had. Totally recommended.

I don't buy it. It's not like every single episode in every single TV series is completely mind-blowingly different than everything else. At this point you've probably seen all the tropes, seen all the plot twists. I also doubt that TV series are captivating because of the story. They're more about the characters, and how you either like them or like to dislike them, or how their experiences make you feel. With the advent of mass-produced media, story no longer has the unifying role within a culture that it once had, we no longer care about the moral of a story, on the contrary we'd rather there weren't any. Story has been downgraded to a vehicle for emotion, or for a punchline in the case of Seinfeld.

And sure, I also play a lot less than I used to. But there are still fantastic games out there worth playing. I loved Hollow Knight and Cuphead and Hyper Light Drifter. And they all were created by people who grew up with the same games as I did.

I like to keep connected I guess. I kind of feel like games have grown up with me, too, almost in parallel.

When I was a kid they were simple and clumsy. I hit puberty in the 80s as games started to come into their own and the industry formed a bit of an identity. In my 20's (the 90's) there was this flurry of activity and games started to be a bit cool and not just for kids and geeks.

By my 30's, games had started making a bit of money and the industry got more professional. Now I'm in my 40's and gaming is kind of bloated and complacent and compromised, but still capable of amazing things, much more amazing than 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

Plus gaming is one of our generation's biggest contributions to culture. Really, it's that and hip hop. Everything else is just a sub genre, but those are two sensational contributions, imo.

Games can create worlds, and the feeling of being present in that world, sometimes better than movies. It is not just about the plot and gameplay. Atmosphere plays a big role.

For examples, try Paris and Sapienza missions in Hitman 2016. Or GTA 5, which will be an amazing snapshot of what 2010s were like in the US.

Well to be fair, the same is true of films and tv. Story arc# 1234, character development #2, twist #3. I am not sure though if it is true of books though. Possibly because the information is much more in books than can be fitted into a 2 hour film / 40 hour game.

Try the last of us and celeste.

The last of us is just a generic 3rd person shooter saved by its cinematics.

Hard agree. I don’t understand why everyone liked it - it felt old fashioned and boring to me even when it came out. It had boss fights and a sewer level, for god’s sake, a sewer level!

I feel like a lot of people “hate” the last of us due to its many praises. But if you didn’t read any reviews about the game would you really rate it this low? Did you finish it?

I finished it when it released and liked it back then. Recently, I got the remaster and played it about half way through until I admitted to myself that it's just not a great game. It's not bad either. But it doesn't really stand out gameplay wise and the story can't save the game. I don't want to convince you to dislike the game, but maybe consider if TLOU is really a game that stands out among 3rd person shooters on its own merit.

Try the original Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Metal Gear Solid 1, Silent Hill 2.

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