The loss of "novelty", to me, one of the most challenging things about aging. You can't feel the excitement of certain things again as you did when you did them for the first time. I think this is why it's important to try new hobbies.

I feel the same way about many things, like (to keep on the space theme) all the recent iterations of Star Wars and Star Trek. People love to complain that the new SW trilogy (or the prequel trilogy) or Star Trek Discovery is a load of rubbish but the reality is that we're just older. Things aren't going to spark in the way they did when we first watched. And that's fine.

While I've been a fan of Discovery for the most part, and it occasionally shows glimpses of promise, it's largely not "Star Trek." The story telling is simply just not rooted same soul that Trek has been built upon. I'm okay with change, but not so much with creating flashy spectacles at the expense of meaningful story telling.

And all of this on the kind of technology platform which could easily have enabled the absolute worst of the Lucas instincts to thrive as far as overcomplicated plots and gee-whiz special effects. Somehow it managed to take us to a dozen different planets and yet stay firmly rooted in a story about parenthood— and that, between a faceless warrior and a voiceless puppet. Wild!

That's a good way to put it. Entirely agree.

I remember being really bored with choosing the ships by hand and so reverse engineered the Ship Team format and wrote one of my first "for myself" programs in Turbo Pascal to generate random ship combinations.

Few years ago I replaced SCII story mode and found it to be a total delight, especially now that I recognize the fine humor in English.

And now I have two sons about the same age that I was, and they got hooked on Melee as well and would play each other and myself, bringing warm happiness to my heart. One of them drew some ships for me on paper and they're on my corkboard in here, making me smile every time I look to the left.

I wish there was a SC3!

The driving factor is that some ships were virtually impossible to defeat in a skilled player's hand so we had to resort to random selection to be even remotely fair to everyone.

:)

Or maybe not. I'm yet to see any modern game that would even remotely approach the magnitude of SC2. So far, the closest competitor was the original Mass Effect game, itself clearly influenced by Star Control games, but even it failed to surpass it.

That being said, if you count the totality of the Mass Effect trilogy, including all its DLC, I think you do get the magnitude of one Star Control 2, and it's generally fantastic.

I have no idea if there's any truth to it, but it sounded like my idea of heaven for a long time. When I learned that they were still working together (Toys for Bob) many years later, I harbored a fantasy about going to work for them.

I doubt that Paul and Fred would have actually disappeared to write the game, but the story is 100% Paul's sense of humor.

Off the top of my head:

- Outer Wilds (an entire solar system is a puzzle stuck in a time loop)

- Hades (a roguelike where dying progresses the story)

- Slay the Spire (a hybrid deckbuilder/roguelike where different runs can produce drastically different gameplay and builds)

- Dead Cells (a hybrid Metroidvania/Roguelike with Diablo-style random weapon/item spawns that force the player to use different strategies with every playthrough)

- Into the Breach (from the guys who made FTL)

- Undertale (a fourth-wall-breaking RPG in which you can talk your way out of any battle, with multiple endings)

- Signs of the Sojourner (a narrative deckbuilding game where your cards represent different types of conversation)

- Her Story (a game all about watching pieces of footage from a deposition about a death... or is it a murder?... and trying to figure out what happened)

- Baba Is You (a puzzle game in which the rules are also objects in the game that can be moved and changed)

- Hypnospace Outlaw (a simulation of an alternate-reality 90's internet)

- The Stanley Parable (a game about following directions, or not following them and irritating the narrator)

- The Beginner's Guide (a narrated tour through the games of another developer, possibly without their approval)

What I was talking about are games like Star Control 2 and Dune 1, where they boldly mixed completely different genres and, in SC2 case, added a very deep lore and managed to feed it to you at the right pace, not overwhelming you with information, and giving it in entertaining way.

For example, I would love some nice space RPG with FTL-like space combat. But they just don't mix genres that way these days.

RimWorld - "sims"

To me, this is where the “start a new company doing something good and interesting” kicks in, it seems. The best part of ageing seem to me that they grey hairs that I acquired during the last startup make it easier to the next one.

I'm really fascinated by speedrunners who can beat my favorite classic games less than an hour, sometimes in minutes. Some of that is cutting weird corners but often it's pure excellent execution.

I often wonder about doing that myself, playing hundreds of hours of a single game to master it. Putting all of my focus on a single game like I used to as a kid, but I don't find anything keeps my attention that way now.

I think partially it's what you said, more money than time and I naturally gravitate towards spending my time on novelty instead of mastery. That's just how my brain works.

The other piece is when I look back, I don't think I spend nearly as much time replaying the same things in the past as I feel like I did. I think those memories of playing and replaying games are somewhat distorted by my memories.

I also spent a great deal of time watching those games being played by friends and their siblings and so forth, during sleepovers and after school.

Ocarina of Time speedrunning has gotten to a really weird place now, where they basically set the character's name to a string of bytes which are executable code, and then de-reference a pointer to it and warp directly to the end credits, all within a few minutes of gaining control of Link. But, the community has a whole bunch of categories for different types of runs, from ones that are basically the Any% category before SRM (stale reference manipulation), to semi-legitimately beating all the dungeons (though with lots of sequence-breaking), to fully glitchless. It's a lot of fun watching some of those other-category runs for a taste of "normal" gameplay done at a very high level.

Another thing that's fun to watch runs of is randomizers (chest contents, quest rewards, sometimes even doors), since then you're not just seeing high level play, you're also seeing someone doing the live work of reasoning about their route through familiar-but-scrambled territory:

https://ootrandomizer.com/

OoT speedrunning is very unique, and since it was a game I played a lot as a kid I'm always excited to watch the ways it's beaten.

I do admit I prefer the categories that emphasize more gameplay though, even if the glitches are incredible.

I remember playing Dragon Warrior on NES late into the night with friends. Grinding away to get that next item and leveling up to fight bigger monsters. It was really fun, really exciting.

A few years ago I got an emulator and fired it up. Played about 5 minutes before I couldn't continue. Just didn't have the desire to grind away. And the emulator had a fastfoward button, which I found. So I just kept zipping around and running into monsters, not even wanting to spend the time to fight them. Spoiled because I didn't have to die, I could just reset to a save point.

I dunno. Maybe that just happens when you get old. Maybe it's just that there's so much instant gratification. I remember playing zelda and meticulously making maps on graph paper etc. Today you can just look it up on the internet in a minute and print a glorious, in color complete map.

It's just not the same anymore.

I've been having a blast these past few days exploring the vast world.

There's nothing that Google can tell me about it. There's still people playing (and building) it, so I can ask for help - my old clan is still going even - but there's no instant fix on everything.

I don't know how long it'll last, and the time it will take is too much to fully immerse, but I've already started making some maps and trying to tackle some quests.

I used to play EliteMUD a ton decades ago. We used to get up at 6am to grab some computer terminals at the city's computer center and play all day.

I could've played from home but the phone bill would've been crippling.

As I said in the other reply on this thread, it's RavenMUD, ravenmud.com 6060.

There's also accumulated gaming experience. I've been gaming for more than 4 decades, there ain't nothing new under the sun.

Also, real life cheevos are harder, and some would say more important, to attain.

I'd say for me, the magic of a lot of things wore off a long time ago. YMMV. GL HF

EDIT: not to say that I don't still enjoy games, but games have to either be really fascinating (factorio, surviving mars, city skylines) on a technical level, be social (multiplayer minecraft with my kids), or emotionally engaging (some RPGs, but usually only one playthrough)

How rare is that?

I stopped playing it years ago when they changed the gym system from a stacked tower to some system where your guys would lose health automatically just by being in the gym. Took the challenge out of it.. I was a completely solo player and enjoyed the challenge of taking on a fully stacked gym tower by myself.

Just as well. It did a number on my phone's battery with their poor coding (e.g. loading graphical assets over and over through an uncached encryption routine or something).

There were a range of medals you could get, too. Think I had to complete it several times over before I was sure how many there were!

I played 100s of games on the Amstrad CPC and Amiga in late 80s/early 90s. Think for me the magnus opus of gaming was the possibility of being able to play people online. The level of competition is high and it almost feels like work, so I stick to turn based games like Civ - but still fond of all the nostalgic game titles.

I vividly remember playing one of the Shinobi games on the Sega Master system, and spent a huge amount of time wandering back and forth in the levels thinking about the townsfolk who occupied various buildings and their work days.

There was also a mountain range in one of the backgrounds on one level, and I recall spending time planning to explore it later, even pausing the game to draw a map of an imagined village there.

Of course now the vocabulary of games (and my understanding of them) has changed a lot, and it's far more obvious what the limits of a game and its interactive areas are - to me they're now throwaway pieces of entertainment, no longer worlds to inhabit and explore.

I remember Choplifter for the Sega Master System. Half the fun was the story in my head regarding the hostages, the behind the scenes operation of rescue attempt, etc. And the tragedy of it all going wrong when you'd crash with people on board...

If I've lost anything as an adult it's that I'm less tolerant of games that don't capture my interest. As a kid I replayed certain games because I simply had fewer games to play. Now there are so many free or cheap games available but I find I quit new games quickly unless they capture my interest.

I remember playing a handful of NES games countless times, and being able to beat several of them in a single sitting.

I think some people manage to hold onto that (see speedrunners and/or world-class players of this or that game), but you'd have to be very intentional about it.

I still like them, but on an emulator, with cheats for easy experience or money. I enjoy the story without the grind, and although I lost the perseverance and endurance I had then, I don't think I'll ever have the time (or the patience) to play them properly again.

You lost something to gain something else.

So I'd just play the same levels over and over again. It would take me years to eventually beat Wing Commander 2 and 3. But it wasn't repetitive because I didn't feel any pressure to actually beat the game. I think I was actually more invested in exploring the logic of the game and creating imaginative storylines instead of actually getting invested in the game.

This one alternate mode of play contrasts to my kids where they seem to have two modes of play. One where they do the same thing and just explore game mechanics while dying over and over, and another where they actually want to make forward progress and often reach out for help. Luckily my generation is more acclimated to this type of interaction so we help out where in the past we would just struggle along or get sidetracked.

This somehow led me and my friends to discover a very unintended way to reach the level select in Sonic 3D: place the cartridge in as loose as you can, and then shove it down fully on the Traveler's Tale logo. Crashes 9 times out of 10, but always worked eventually.

It seems like a grind from the outside but with the right game and the right community... there is always a faster time to achieve :) https://www.speedrun.com/

this is why I actively avoid reviews for any media I might be interested in watching. I don't want any influence on my experience at all. I don't even let my friends tell me why they like a movie: if they recommend it, that's the most I want to know. It's awesome! I can pick something up like Nier or the first Avengers movie, and it's a completely immersive experience. I don't think it's difficult; it's not like reviews are some core part of life that can't be lived without. And I can't speak for you, but for me, not having reviews is part of the magic of gaming that I experienced as a kid: blindly choosing games to try based on cover art, the name, the studio, the console, etc. Building up my own idea of what the game will be like, making sense of the game as I experience it with no expectations, and finally forming my own opinion of it makes gaming feel like it did when I was a kid.

The exception is for games that I just never would have heard of. There are literally thousands of games out there, and if it's not modern, it's probably not going to be talked about. So I'll watch stuff like Ross's Game Dungeon or Civvie 11 to get a taste of older things that would be harder for me to stumble upon, and just keep a distant finger on the pulse of what's hot today, like Among Us or Fall Guys.

There's also minor stuff that I think people underestimate. When I play games, I don't have a second monitor with discord/netflix/youtube, I don't constantly text people. I just play and if I get bored, I take that as a sign that I need to work harder to figure the game out or just play a different game, like kids do. If you get stuck, try to find a PDF of the strategy guide instead of looking up youtube walkthroughs.

In my experience, gaming has always, continuously changed. There's some magic that older games have that new ones just don't, but there's also magic to newer games that older ones just don't. And there's also the player's ability to immerse themselves into the games. I try to be mindful and actively fine-tune the way I game and it's had great results for me whether I'm playing my childhood classics, experiencing old games for the first time, or jumping on the bandwagon of what's shiny and new.

Of course, gaming is not the only hobby that a person can gain satisfaction from, and you can similarly get that sense of growth from other goal or skill based hobbies. Painting, music, or even just learning a foreign language. The payoff may be much greater than mastering a game, as society at large tends to value these "worldly" skills more than gaming skill.

Thanks for mentioning Hades, based on the steam reviews and gameplay trailer, it looks promising.

I think part of this was because games used to be about the gameplay, and not about the special effects.

A few weeks ago I got an old Pong cart in the mail. By the time I looked up from playing it, I'd lost half a day.

No special effects. Minimal sound. Irritating controllers. But almost entirely about the gameplay, and not about the game.

Gaming is in very good shape right now. I think most of the lack of immersion comes down to age. And also comes down to having many more diversions when you have an afternoon to yourself with time to play.

There are just as many great games, they're just not the ones advertised to you.

I always speak for myself dude. Like everyone else in here.

they're just not the ones advertised to you

I'm not learning about new games from ads. I don't view ads at all online.

The great games have no "finish". Where is the finish line in SimCity? Factorio never really stops, just getting bigger each time you play. I don't like SeaOfThieves but I appreciate that it is about playing rather than winning. And I cannot be the only one who has never bothered to kill the ender dragon.

Hah well this is obviously highly subjective.