2011-2014

It went downhill after the PS3/X360/Wii/PSP/DS era ended.

Second this, it was so active back then. Granted, there were also a lot more issues with bad behavior on the boards, but it was a decent trade-off all in all.

There were great discussions every week, about sales and game releases. Long and insightful posts about games and gaming, whereas now, the majority of longer posts appear to be about other topics (politics). I suppose this is organic, in a way, as gaming has grown so much more mainstream, it becomes intertwined with more and broader subjects and individuals. 

Personally, I'm approaching my 19th year in here, which is insane, it's nearly half my life. I don't post all that often, but I still check vgchartz every single day, and usually multiple times a day at that. 

14 years for me.

Damn where has the time gone ;(

A similar thing happened to gaming as to TV. When the selection was still smaller, major new releases stood out, got a lot of build-up, then release discussions and comparisons between systems. And many more people played new releases at release. Many more people played the same games at the same time.

Nowadays the market is so saturated with games, games are much longer, people play their backlog and new releases hardly get any (pre-)release attention. No more 'official' threads for major AAA releases. Nowadays most people are playing different games and get to new releases whenever (sale or subscription)

Gaming has turned from 'community events' to 'what are you playing now'. The last really hyped game was CP2077 and that sorta killed the pre-release hype machine. GTA6 is coming in half a year but mostly in silence. On here anyway. It's harder to have discussions about games when people are all playing different games, very limited perspectives on new releases. It takes the release of Switch 2 now to get some discussions going about the launch games.

Earlier this time used to be the busiest period of the year with new AAA game releases. Now I don't even know what's coming out this season. And it's not just here. I still follow Eurogamer (although deleted my account there) for new game releases but I still have no clue what the big games are this season. Plus there as well, big new games releases used to trigger threads 1,000 posts long, now comments are in the dozens.

And agreed, there's a lot more about gaming 'politics' nowadays than about the games themselves.

Is the excitement gone in gaming? Has it all become too familiar? Too predictable? Too political? Too safe? Boring?

With gamers spending most their time on GAAS nowadays, gaming has become a routine instead of looking forward to the next 'fix'. Attention has shifted backwards, from looking at what comes out in 2-3 years to what are good older games to play. Both a result from E3 always over promising then under delivering (before getting scrapped altogether) and games now rarely releasing finished. Always better to wait. 

And since anticipation delivers the best dopamine, the excitement is much lower nowadays.

Gamers went from living in the future to now mostly living in the past. Nostalgia threads are much more common than speculation about upcoming games and hardware. (Also because leaks are far fewer, industry learned their lesson with early hype bullshots etc)

I used to visit for the sales data after buying a PS3 and I lurked in the Forums, nearly two decades ago now (That's crazy) and those two years were very fun and seeing the console warring was fantastic. I was both an PS, Wii and Xbox gamer but I always supported PS through the fight woth Xbox, silently asides from the odd YouTube comment debate. Just watching it was really entertaining. So 2008-2010 but mainly for the sales data and the discussions. I do prefer being on the forums the last two years and contributing to this small community has helped me o much through metal health issues.

I suppose you're right. Cinema has gone much the same way after the advent of streaming and much better home-cinema equipment. I know for my own part that I rarely get excited about movies any more, and I almost never go to the movies any longer. 

Twitch streamers and the like often dictate adoption rates and hype surrounding game releases now, to a much greater extent than the developer and/or publisher themselves. I rarely see proper commercials for games nowadays, only the very biggest releases get some love. Recently, there were quite a few Battlefield 6 posters and events around, but the game itself is huge and the developer has their main office here in the city, so that kinda makes sense.

To me, it almost feels like "gaming culture" has died, at least to some extent. If I don't want to be a part of the noisy crowd that enjoys streamers and the like, I'm left mostly on my own (mind you - I'm fine with that as well). But I do miss the discussions and general fanfare around gaming back in the days, one of my childhood friends used to download and burn the trailers from events and shows, and then we watched them together on a big screen. 

Back when we still got a good amount of sales data from NPD and the threads would go on forever. Once the data dried up, the discussions fizzled out. The only consistent sales data we get anymore is from Japan. A humble video game magazine is the only thing keeping sales discussions alive. But with that market essentially being carried by a single platform, even there the excitement over discussing sales is gone.

Regarding comments about negativity and inter-fandom and even intra-fandom wars, that's always been a problem. I've been here for 12 years, and in that time I've had the unfortunate distinction of being dogpiled on by Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, and even Star Wars fans, despite being a fan of all of those things myself. People being jerks over video games or movies (or any other kind of entertainment) is nothing new. It's the Internet, after all.

Yeah, the rise of digital and decline of game stores killed the old gaming culture. Midnight launches, regularly visiting game stores, browsing the discount and 2nd hand games sections, looking at the upcoming releases, all things from the past.

Gaming commercials seemed to have died along with cable tv, I can't remember when last I saw a commercial for a game release. I can't even remember if I saw any commercials for Switch 2... crazy. 

And like you, Twitch and Youtube streamers are not for me. Maybe the new gaming culture is there. 

However also the online gaming landscape has changed drastically. Since party chat became the norm, playing against 'randoms' only got worse and worse. Bad enough for me to give up on online gaming altogether. Which also led to less engagement on forums for those games. For me the favorite era of this forum and others coincides with the favorite era to play online. PS3/360 and WiiU by proxy (sharing levels etc)

Gaming became routine instead of feeling new, exciting with endless possibilities. VR revived that for a little bit but didn't catch on and is falling into routine as well already. (But still hyped to play FS2024 on PSVR2 next year, never thought that could happen)

Indeed, I see this is a modern cultural shift, not unlike the one where arcades died and gaming moved fully into living rooms and onto computer desks. I still love gaming though, despite being 41 years old (42 in a couple of months). If anything, I think I appreciate good game design now more than ever. There are many worthless titles released all the time, but there are diamonds in the rough - I have quite the gem collection by now! 

2010 was roughly when I think the discussion around sales and stuff was the most interesting, but my favorite years in the community were probably 2012 to 2014.