I feel the increased competition has also made indie games take less risks than they would before. Maybe it’s a combination of crowdfunding as well, where developers are now listening to fans instead of publishers, and that may not necessarily be any better.
I guess the best example would be Yooka-Laylee. The team at Rare made a much more innovative game (that still worked as a Banjo title) at Microsoft than they did when they went independent.
I mean, with Yooka-Laylee they did make the game they wanted to make, since it was crowdfunded and the pitch that went up is the game funders got. But you have to wonder whether they went with a throwback which rigidly follows the formula of the N64 games because that was the most sustainable, and risk averse, route, in the modern market.
The other issue to me is how we live in a truly cross-platform world now, and the only system with a substantial chunk of the market to warrant developing solely around new input devices is the PS4. So we’ve seen some interesting VR games, but everything else is made around the regular controller. It says a lot how the Wii U only got a very small handful of independent games that utilised the GamePad (and Kinect 2 of course), like Year Walk and Affordable Space Adventures compared with the Wii.
The Wii’s install base and unique control input - and relative lack of competition before PC and mobile became huge - ironically meant it saw many more unique indie games built around its controller despite the barrier to entry for indies being that much higher then Wii U. If I remember correctly developers needed their own physical office to be a WiiWare developer!
True. But every now and then an indie title comes along that is so amazing, it genuinely blows away everythinb I’ve played before. Rocket League and Towerfall are those two games for me.
So I’m still open to trying them, especially if they are focused on multiplayer and twitch reflexes.
To go along with this topic a week late, I was watching a buddy of mine on Twitch in the desktop app last night and decided to check my library of games I own there via Twitch Prime…
69 GAMES
Good heavens! There are good ones in there too, that I don’t own anywhere else! I want to play The Messenger and Overload and definitely will. It’s just crazy that I got them essentially “free” from being an Amazon Prime member.
I could never buy a game again and have enough to play the rest of my life. That won’t happen, but I am definitely being even more selective in 2019, and my Best Buy GCU runs through next February!
I’ve been doing better and buying less games. I still buy a few games here and there that I don’t finish, but that’s life. I also try to restrict myself with just one console each new gen, to go along with PC and that helps. I also play big time sink games such as Destiny 2, Sea of Thieves and Elite Dangerous, so I only have time for a handful single player and handful of retro games each year and that keeps me in check.
Last year, realising I had bought roughly 60 games since January, I decided I had a bit of a problem and so decided to finally get around to finishing off previously unfinished games. Since September I have now finished 18 games and only now seem to have stalled with the NES Ghosts 'N Goblins port to 3DS.
Going by the games I have finished, I seem to really enjoy platformers and action-adventure games, but while I find myself enjoying the concepts of RPGs and horror games I never get around to properly playing them. I’d say time is the biggest issue for me with work and social obligations but even when I was a student I rarely found myself playing a game to a finished state.
Maybe I should just downsize my collection, throw out what I know I’ll never come back to and move on from there, since with 300 games now sitting on my shelves I know I’ll never get around to enjoying all of them.
It’s not a bad idea. Life is too short to be playing/collecting games you don’t truly enjoy just because you like them conceptually. It’s also money better spent elsewhere on stuff that makes you happy.
(I say that as a guy that probably has as many games as you that I don’t play though )
I told myself in the new year’s resolution thread (I think) that I’d buy less games but that obviously hasn’t happened with me picking up a Virtual Boy and then revisiting the PlayStation, Game Boy and Saturn libraries.
Recently I have decided to slow down on my game playing though - and it’s actually been a huge relief, like a weight off my shoulders. I feel modern games, and systems, have almost conditioned me to want to keep playing on until I complete a game, ready to move on to the next one. The Switch, while convenient, feels very much designed to fit in with a new wave of game design, where we play continually (with helpfully placed checkpoints to keep us going) instead of in defined blocks or sessions.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to slow down my playing but with the games I’ve been trying - which are often arcade-like or very much level-based - you are encouraged to take them at your own pace and I really like that.
Where before I would try and get through, say, Tetris with Cardcaptor Sakura over a weekend to move on to the next game, all I’ve played this week are bits of games instead. Today I perfected two levels of NiGHTS and it was just as satisfying than if I had spent a few hours on trying to complete something to move on to something else.
And a lot of older games fit that pattern well, even the least likely titles like Ocarina of Time. Think of how on that game, you always begin from the start of a dungeon or from Link’s house (or the Temple of Time if you’re adult Link). The game is designed so that every session can go in a different way - one day you might spend your 30 minutes going to Lon Lon Ranch and discovering something new there, or you visit the fishing hut instead of continuing your main quest.
I think the continual nature of today’s games is still fine - but I do feel like it makes me want to keep playing whatever’s in front of me instead of take a step back and think about what I’d like to play instead. There are still modern games that fit that approach (Gal Metal from the top of my head always felt like something I could play a level of and it’d feel substantial) which is good.
Dude, I agree with everything you said, definitely this line:
“I really wish modern games would cap out at the 30 hour mark and add NG+ if they feel the value isn’t there. I guess this is why I enjoy retro game. I can beat Mega Man 2 in a sitting and have a great time doing it. (this is precisely why I want to watch very little tv but love movies). Ultimately, I still want to play something new as well so there is that struggle. I might have to come up with a formula for buying games (If a game appeals to me and if Metacritic > 80% but < 45 hours long = buy)”
I wish they would cap there as well, as quite a bit are just too long for my taste. This is also why I like to do retro games more than ever, because I can play them, beat them and replay them more to do better at them than playing a long game once and may never play it again in full. I now struggle to do games that are 50+ hours because I may never beat them or take months to do so.
I’m a Youtuber so that makes it even worse, as I want to put out vids of playthroughs, but with longer games it would be difficult. It’s why I focus on games that are under 10 hours long. But yeah, this is also why I want to have more focus on games that I buy and such, so I can handle them all.
My formula for the prices of games is $1/hour of entertainment. If I feel in only get ten hours of enjoyment out of it, then it’s only worth ten bucks.
Unfortunately retro gaming seems to have ripped that formula to shreds because I end up buying a bunch of stuff I never get around to playing.
I’m okay with long games, but I can definitely agree that generally a 20-30 hour game at max is much better. I only end up playing those super long games once a year or so at most. There are only a very select few games that are worth the 200+ hour milestone. BoTW, Rocket League, and previously the likes of CS:GO, Minecraft, Quake 3, WoW etc.
These giant open world games nowadays just aren’t special enough to warrant that amount of play time imo. Witcher 3, anything Ass Creed, Skyrim etc… They are all gear games, but I’m not going to put crazy hours into them.
Generally I find if a game does what it set out to do well within its running time it’s worth the price of admission, but for some genres I’m also expecting a degree of uniqueness or originality. Some genres are just so saturated now that it’s hard to justify spending the time and money playing the games.
A game which outstays its welcome but I still had fun before that moment is still time and money well spent. As long as that moment doesn’t come depressingly early of course.
Picked up a buncha PS4 games for cheap over the holiday season but I’ll never get to them LMAO. Pillars of Eternity for $6…but when would I even tear the wrap on it? My money’s on never.
Yeah. I added a lot to the collection over the last month. Still need to snap pix, but ultimately I’ve got more games than I can reasonably play in the rest of my lifetime. Definitely plan to slow down in 2020.
Ironically I’m not too worried about this myself because I don’t buy latest release games which drop in value. My game purchases are pretty much entirely:
Vintage games (Famicom, Saturn etc) which are either cheap and/or hold/increase their value over time
Limited Run company stuff, which can always be sold, again often at a profit, a couple of times at huge profits
Ultra cheap more recent stuff (eg current gen or PS360 games) which cost so little if I don’t play the worst they do is take up space
I came to the same conclusion a few years ago - I have way too many unplayed/unfinished games that realistically I will struggle to play them all before I pass away…
At first I started just playing my favourite genre, driving games, thinking that would do it but no, there are even far too many of those too. I decided not to buy a 7th gen console on purpose to give myself time to catch up - I was doing quite well but then mid gen the kids wanted a Wii and somebody gave me a 360. Then I started playing catch up with the games I missed, bought a PS3, then a Wii U, PS4 and XB1. Then I soft modded the Wii and started playing all the SFC/MD/Neo Geo/PCE games I missed, (I was a Spectrum/Amiga kid growing up). So now I am drowning in great games dating back to the early nineties.
The best bit now is the fact that I really don’t need to buy any new games or any of the next round of consoles - I’m literally set up for life. But, somehow I bet I do, something will come out that I want and I won’t be able to help myself. Argh nevermind.
I’m also slowing down this year and spending this year appreciating what I have.
So far it’s mostly been those PS1 classics and PC Engine games I put on my PSP-3000 but haven’t played nearly as much as I wanted to because of other games.
I realized the depth of my problem last week while going though my Wii U collection and ripping them all to a hard drive. Some of the games I bought years ago and never opened included Xenoblade Chronicles X, Twilight Princess HD and The Wonderful 101. Pathetic.
I think this comes down to habits, and I’ve developed some rather unhealthy ones over the years. Like Kawika, money is not tight but buying things and never using them feels wasteful. I understand the “collector” aspect of the hobby, but what’s the end game? Where do I put everything if I never stop/slow down? And when do I ever play the games I claim to enjoy.
Some ideas come to mind that might make more sense in their own thread…
I make a point of opening everything on arrival even if I don’t play it right away. Just seems silly to leave things sealed, especially when it would later make you less likely to open/play them as it would “destroy the value.”
)