| Jumpin said: Probably not having enough time in life. But I disagree that things are getting worse. That's merely a pessimistic perception the internet media is manufacturing (note, I'm not assuming you hold this position/perception, my understanding is that you're merely entertaining the idea of it). Even with the lack of ideal state, look at things in perspective: so much is amazing right now! 1. Games are not getting more expensive, they are way cheaper now than ever. Games today very often cost less than 10 USD. Not too long ago games were the equivalent to 120 to 150 USD with way fewer sales, and even then the sales were like 40% off, so you'd be spending only like 90 USD instead of 150. 2. Availability of games is significantly higher than ever: while there are some gaps (like Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Illusion of Time, Terranigma) nearly all of the classics are available on Switch & Switch 2 in bundles, remasters, remakes, or both (see Dragon Quest). Ubiquity too, I can pick up my phone, and BOOM! Dragon Quest 1 to 5 (and the mobile versions are great!) and you can pretty much play those on every platform. Before, there were windows you could get games during, "Phoenix Wright? You should have come here last week, it's not available anymore. Is it coming back? Hopefully we'll get a new shipment, if not by the autumn then sometime next year." 3. The volume of games is higher than ever. Without exaggeration, the volume of games available today is hundreds to thousands of times higher. There are tens of thousands of games available on modern consoles, there are well over 100,000 games on Steam. On Apple/Google, it's in the millions. And you can get any and all those games right now! Go back, again, not very long ago, and the volume of games was simply not very high; it would be very difficult to get most RPGs → and sometimes it was easier to import a foreign game than it was to get one that is supposed to be local in your country. You'd have to wander around for hours going retailer to retailer, and even then you might have a few dozen to a few hundred games, total. And you'd be looking at lots of duplicates, there would be like 1/3rd of all the retail space dedicated to a clearance of Riven or Warcraft 3. 4. I can pick up my home console, and play every single game I own on handheld. I can kickstand my console on a coffee table, and use the controller as a mouse, or play motion games. We have VR platforms and AR as options for gaming today. 30 years ago I had to put my playstation upside down and hope for the best that Final Fantasy 7 would play, and not go into an infinite load screen. I went through three PlayStation's. Nowadays, people get a a bit of drift (highly fixable with some electronic contact cleaner and a bit of swirling) and they're helpless because it's the apocalypse of gaming. 5. Ridiculously great convenience. At the click of a button, I can look at all the news about upcoming games, see every game I want that currently has a sale, or browse huge volumes of games, look at their previews, read what they're about, check out other games by the company, and then select what I want to my favourites, and then just wait until the next sale... or if I must have it right now! Buy it right now. Back, not even that long ago, I had to physically drive around between multiple retailers, go in and browse the games while people dressed in gym clothes and a funky odour awkwardly, trying to dodge them as they swayed around the aisles. I can get it all online now! And even people who like physical stuff, they can order it and have it in 1 to 5 business days (same day if ordering from a local retailer that has delivery). Back before 1996, when the worldwide web began to really take off. You had to go to a smoke shop, buy a magazine, to find out if there was any gaming news. Screw the Nintendo Treehouse of old, that happened very rarely, and at first you had to subscribe to a magazine, pay money, and they would physically mail you a laserdisc or some kind of VHS tape, and you'd watch the 20 minutes or so of previews. And the people would talk like they were both high and brain damaged because they thought that was entertaining. Do the physical media people want to go back to that? If I told you there was a game where you could zoom around hundreds of galaxies and explore something like 14 (or is it 18) quintillion planets, and you could play it on your home console, pick up your save on your MacBook, and then later on your phone... it would blow the minds of people 20 (maybe even 10) years ago; that is normal gaming today. I just think the people saying gaming is getting much worse lack perspective, are overly pessimistic, and too readily buying into overdramatic catastrophe narratives. We see these doom narratives again and again and again, it's never true. But people keep repeating this same mistake again and again and again. Just to re-iterate. If I were to quit gaming, it's definitely not because of some current trend. I would be because of some real world thing that prevents me from having the time for it... same as every other era. Right now, I'm just looking at my Switch 2 library and watching how every week more stuff becomes available. New insane sales are happening. And how even though I can't play Chrono Trigger right now, there are like 3400 other RPGs I can play... right now! And that includes most of the classics all the way back to the NES. Go back 25 years, if you're a Nintendo gamer, you can play like 12 RPGs, and they're spread across three platforms... still no Chrono Trigger... and one of them (so like 9% of your total available RPGs) is Holy Magic Century 😄 |
I think by worse most people mean as compared with 2 to 10 years ago.
