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Comment by soderfoo | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's just me being an idealist and projecting.

I acknowledge what the analytics show, but always allude to the hypothetical casual loner segment who we lack data on because we pushed them away or we don't measure things relevant to them.

I'm a boomer millenial, or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment.

Casual loners are irrelevant to the monetization and in game economy people, resulting in relegation to second class status.

Until someone figures out a way to milk this segment for that juicy recurring revenue, consumable$, $kins, etc..., we must accept our fate, largely an afterthought.

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Yet we are the people who started gaming on PCs -- we made consumer 3D accelerators profitable and spent the time writing about them on forums in the 90s and 2000s. We certainly have the power to move markets.

People who can't be monetized sometimes are valued in their opinions. If someone principled really likes a thing, it can gain more popularity by others who trust that person adopting it. Maybe not loners. But there's still reason to make users happy because viral marketing impact cannot be measured well.

I'm disagreeing with everything you're saying here.

Not because you're wrong.

But because I'm in this picture and I don't like it, and I just found out that "boomer millennial" is a fitting descriptor.

Goddamit.

You’re in denial now; you’ll work your way to acceptance soon enough (as someone who’s done the same thing).

Thanks for the chuckle, brightened up my day.

> I'm a boomer millenial, or whatever we're called now, and never took to online gaming, so I'm part of this segment.

And you are not alone - apparently 53% of gamers (total) prefer single-player games, [although this falls to only 30% in the 16-19 years age-group]. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/most-gamers-prefer-single...

I wonder how much of this is familiarity (i.e. I play games in the style I did when I was sixteen) versus people in older age-groups having less sustained time for gaming (i.e. grabbing twenty minutes while the baby sleeps) and single-player being inherently better for that use-case.

Part of it is reflexes too. I used to love fast paced FPS games as a teen and was actually pretty good at them until my early 30's. As time went on, I started noticing I was doing consistently worse in 1v1 firefights. I started gravitating towards games that had a 'slower' way to contribute like playing vehicles in the battlefield series.

As time goes on I've gotten more and more into single player games, especially games that let me build stuff.

REAL-TIME multiplayer is worse for that use case. There's no reason a game that is asynchronous, like an old school play by mail game, couldn't be fun for twenty minutes when you have time, and maybe there's a limit or a turn involved so you don't get too ahead, and your partner does their thing when they get time

I have wanted to see a game like that for years and years. I think this is why chess.com is huge with the youths, as it fits my description and is fairly unique -- I just don't personally care for chess.

it's a little old but check frozen synapse - top down tactics games like that have done asynchronous multiplayer a decent bit

This is because the multiplayer games we played at 16 are 10-15 years old. You literally can’t go back to those happy memories again. You play halo 3 today you get wrecked by the people who haven’t stopped regularly playing in over a decade. And when you try and play the latest fps game you go this sucks, its not halo 3.

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