BraLoD said:
Jaicee said:
I felt that way about gaming in general back in the late 1990s (which were my mid to late teen years) in part because, to be honest, I had difficulty adapting to the standardization of 3D initially, having grown up on sprites (though also because I had developed other priorities at that stage of life, like boys, music, getting my driver's license, wing chun, and the coolness that was TV for girls back then (Buffy, Friends, Sabrina, etc.)). I've sort of fallen in and out of love with gaming in fits and starts ever since. I've never quit playing, but gaming has been at this stage a high-priority hobby for me and at that a low-priority interest.
I'd say my lowest level of interest overall was reached around the turn of the current decade because it just felt like gaming was not meant for me. I couldn't relate to the popular games and franchises like GTA, God of War, Gears of War, BioShock, Red Dead Redemption, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Hitman, Dishonored, No More Heroes, Lollipop Chainsaw, or even Little King's Story, and casual gaming on the Wii had only limited appeal to me as well. It didn't feel like there was much of a place for yours truly in gaming anymore. However, the popularization of Steam has rekindled my interest in this medium in recent years, as it provides easy access to a ton of games that are very heartfelt...and (speaking to some personal bias here) often aesthetically resemble the types of games I grew up on. I find that Steam also produces a fair number of games that are thematically pertinent to real life, not just escapisms, and, to me anyway, that matters.
Properly commercial gaming ("AAA" gaming) has also improved somewhat in the current console generation, IMO, both in design terms and in terms of representation. However, I usually find that so-called AAA games are just not very substantive and tend to be more focus group tested and gimmicky; more so than games used to be. It's been that way for a long time now. But it's getting a little better though, I think. Horizon: Zero Dawn is slightly above average, IMO, while Nier: Automata is WAY above average thematically. I think we've got a lot to look forward to even from more commercial games! I'm actually feeling a little optimistic about the medium as a whole these days. |
That's sad to know, 'cause late 90s was by far the best period of gaming, IMO 
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Well let's put it this way: according to your profile, you're 11 years younger than me, which places the late '90s as your formative years. I don't think it's coincidental that you have particular nostalgia for how gaming was during your childhood. So do I! It's just that my childhood began a decade earlier! You see what I mean?
My first experience with proper 3D gaming outside of simplistic stuff like Doom was Super Mario 64. I was used to Super Mario adventures always being 2D platformers where you simply moved from one end of the stage to the other, and perhaps along a world map. I expected Super Mario 64 to be essentially similar, but perhaps in forward-scrolling instead of side-scrolling. Imagine my surprise at being just thrown into this world with no explanation as to what I was supposed to do therein! Initially it was really frustrating for me! It took me two hours to figure out that I was supposed to jump into the Bob-Omb painting, and two days to figure out what my actual goal in the game was: to amass power stars. Once I figured out that this was basically a treasure-hunt game vaguely similar to adventures like Secret of Mana, it became way too easy for me, by contrast! So my impression of it was that, in contrast to the easy to learn, but difficult to master types of experiences I'd grown up with, this seemed like the opposite: difficult to learn, but easy to master, where the biggest challenge was just figuring out how to play.
Then I got a PlayStation with Crash Bandicoot and THAT was more like it for me! That was more the type of experience I had expected to get from Super Mario 64. A lot of the PlayStation games (especially the earlier ones) were like that: Final Fantasy VII, the Tomb Raider and Oddworld games, etc. They were a little more straightforward in design terms and I found it easier to adapt to that, as it was more similar in play terms to what I was familiar with. It seemed like Nintendo wanted to push me into the deep end of 3D gaming before I was ready for it, while Sony and other PlayStation developers and publishers had more mercy on people like me, seeking more to ease me into this brave new world gently. It worked. I got used to it and gradually became more open to more complex and exploratory games in 3D. But that was a difficult time in my gaming life overall. :P Plus I was distracted with a lot of usual concerns and interests of teenage girls in that time frame.
I also wonder where the appeal was in last gen with its broken games, moshun control hype, CoD clones and decline and Westernization of Japanese games?
