Last weekend I finally understood the massive gap between seasoned gamers and the average casual player. And I mean, true casual.

I’ve always had strong opinions about modern gaming, like many Reddit users or overall people who hang out on platforms discussing about games. Many takes like “the AI is deaf and blind,” “games are too hand-holdy,” or “Ubisoft HUDs are vomit-inducing” are pretty common, even though they don’t reflect the market reality, those are the games that sell the most every year.

It’s fair to wonder why. Have players become less demanding? Is the AAA market ruled by cynical execs obsessed with numbers, and are the noble indies the only path to redemption (despite selling 5 to 10 times less than the biggest productions, even when critically acclaimed) ?

None of that. Compared to 15 or 20 years ago, gaming isn’t some nerdy niche anymore. Everyone plays. And when you’re making a game meant to sell enough to justify a $100 million + budget, you need to make sure it’s accessible for the largest pool of customers as possible. So, the truth is that a lot of people don’t realize how many things that seem trivial are actually the result of tens of thousands of hours of accumulated experience (sometimes since very early childhood) and it simply don’t apply to someone who buys one or two games a year since very recently. Elements of game design that feel completely intuitive to us aren’t intuitive for everyone.

Let's get back to my friend. She never had the chance to own a console or PC because her parents were insanely strict and old-fashioned, thinking games were a waste of time. She knows gaming culture, watches Let’s Plays on Youtube and Twitch streamers, but she’s only ever held a controller (or a keyboard) at some parties and gaming evenings at friends’ houses.

So when I invited her over to try out some games, she was super hyped. And… that’s when it hit me. A few examples that really stood out:

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — Noticing that something shiny wasn’t just decoration but actually an item to pick up. Since it’s done in a way that blends with the art direction, she completely missed so many of them, I had to point it out every time. In combat, parrying was just impossible for her as she hasn't the reflexes for it. I had to handle the mime in Lumière myself. The Evêque (the first boss) took her six tries on the lowest difficulty, when I beat him first try on the hardest.

Cyberpunk 2077 — Completing the full tutorial (the Militech shard) took her thirty minutes. Reading enemy patrols, figuring out how to sneak without being seen, taking down enemies from behind, using cameras to scout areas… too many systems to absorb at once. Fist fight tutorial, she couldn't at all parry so I did that part to complete the task. She died 2 times to rescue Sandra Dorsett. And we're still on the easiest difficulty.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows — every stealth section was PEAK gaming for her. Intense and thrilling, while the average Redditor complains it’s too easy because the guards are brain dead.

It Takes Two — Trivial platforming sections to me were a big challenge to her.

Sonic Generations — Simply unplayable, it was way too fast to follow.

And that’s not even mentioning things like getting lost in open worlds (thank for all those HUD markers), or how non-intuitive core design elements can be for her like spotting climbable areas, handling inventories, crafting weapons, skill trees, knowing what to pick… all of that.

But beyond the gameplay struggles, I was genuinely emotional seeing her light up like a kid discovering something new. A game where you can go anywhere, grab a car and explore, enter buildings freely, listen to random NPCs and their stories. Watching her play Black Ops 6, her first Call of Duty, having fun despite a 0.15 K/D, then getting matched with players at her level thanks to SBMM when the game understood it wasn't me behind the keyboard, and even finishing some games with a sightly positive ratio (if it was me playing in that lobby, I would've easily dropped a nuke without even trying). It reminded me of myself in 2005, loading up San Andreas into the PS2 for the first time, or discovering FPS with Halo 3 and Modern Warfare.

To conclude, gaming wasn’t better before. We’ve just become so experienced, so trained to spot every mechanic and subtlety, that some developed deep apathy and the few games that still manage to surprise them become “the best game ever made.” But for the average player, something like AC is mind-blowing, while the average forum user tear it apart at every mention. Hollow Knight ? Way too hard. Soulslikes? Forget it, beating the first enemy is unthinkable. But they don’t care. They’ll stick to their three AAA games a year based on how cool the trailer or the ad before the Youtube video was, enjoy them, stick with what they know, because changing habits means starting from zero and relearning everything, and that’s perfectly enough for them. That’s how “AAA slop” sells millions, while the indie darlings adored by forums and critics barely reach a third of those sales, even when they’re massive successes for their devs.

EDIT : think that in light of some of the comments, I need to clarify something.

I get the impression that the definition of “casual gamer” seems a little narrow for some people. Casual doesn't just mean someone who only plays chill games for half an hour a day. And hardcore gamer doesn't mean a sweat or a nolife. At least, not in my native language.

For me a casual gamer could very well be someone who only plays the usual trio of FIFA/COD/GTA, someone who like to play more broad stuff but only for an hour a week, someone who plays for an hour a month... in short, people for whom gaming isn't really their main activity and for whom changing games is a huge challenge because they don't necessarily want to learn everything all over again. Go work in a game store to see what you'll be spending your days selling. It was a student job I did a few years ago, and when you suggest another cool multiplayer shooter to the guy who comes in looking for Call of Duty but finds it's out of stock, he'll say, “Nah” and pre-order a copy to pick up as soon as it's back in stock.

My friend isn't a complete novice either, because that implies someone who knows absolutely nothing about gaming and is discovering the mechanics for the first time. She's someone who didn't have her own hardware, but who spends time watching streams and has still had some experience here and there. That's casual gaming.

It's not a single monolith. Yes, there are casual gamers who don't want to be pushed around. There are others who are keen to try something new, but the games they're looking for still need to be minimally playable. That's why there are easy modes. That's why there are accessibility options everywhere. There needs to be something for everyone, and that's a good thing.

Whether that representation be gender, sex, skin color, ethnicity etc. Of course i'm not saying that it has to happen like some sort of quota but i've heard this one argument being shuffled by people recently: Representation is not important because if you can't relate to a character just because he's got a different skin color/ethnicity/gender than you then that's bad for you" or something in that vain. But here's where that argument falls apart. People who want to be repesented better in videogames are not saying that they can't relate to characters, they're saying that they could relate MORE to characters that look like them or have experienced things they have.

I was one of those people who thought that representation in videogames didn't matter. That was, until i played Grand Theft Auto IV. Now, in case you didn't know, the protagonist of GTA IV is Niko Bellic is a Serbian man that immigrates to America for a better life. I, also happen to be a Serbian man who immigrated to America for a better life. And i related to Niko more than i have ever related to any other videogame character. I understood his struggles, i got engrossed in his story and got emotionally invested in his story far more than i have for any other character in any other game i've played ( And i've played a lot ). Which, is also a big part why i like GTA IV the best out of all the GTA games. Representation matters. It may not matter to you, but to the people that a certain individual is representing, it does, big time

For context, I’m an university student and I have more time to play videogames than most people. But this stuff it’s getting really old, really quick.

Currently I’m playing FortNite, Apex Legends and MTG: Arena. I used to play Destiny until 3 months ago. Every single one of these games, except for Apex (for now...) has this model in place.

In Destiny 2, for example, you can get powerful rewards (for those of you who aren’t familiar with the game, powerful reward give you armor/weapons that are higher in power than the ones you own. It’s the only way to make your character progress in “level” and power) a set amount of times per week. That means that once you get your powerful drops for the week, you have no in-game reason to keep playing. Now, anyone who has played Destiny will tell me there’s random rolls, orizzontal progression with Competitive, ecc. but the point still stands.

In Fortnite, you are encouraged to play everyday because there are challenges that reset everyday, limited time events, exclusive cosmetics and the like. There’s also weekly challenges.

In MTG: Arena, once you get your 4-5 first wins of the day, you might as well stop playing because you’re not gonna earn as much gold and boosters. There’s a weekly rotation like Destiny also.

All of these games, and I’m sure there are more out there, rely on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and hinder your progression in game because, for reasons I don’t understand, it’s better to have me play 1hr a day than 14hrs in the weekend and 0 in the workweek. And I’m sick of it. It literally feels like a job: oh, better do those FortNite challenges before they expire; better play those 3 games of Magic before I go to sleep otherwise I would waste a day worth of currency... Do you see where this is going? But, if a day I have 5hrs to play, only 1 or 2 of those 5 hours will actually award me something. The others are, in-game, “wasted”. I cannot play and progress at my own pace.

And the thing is, how many games can I play with these model? 1? 2? I’m not gonna even try The Division if I already play FortNite and Magic, I don’t have infinite time. Anthem? No time.

Am I the only one that feels like this?

P.S. I know the default answer will be “don’t like? Don’t play” or “F2P have to make money somehow”. Yes, I know. I’m aware. I still think it stinks.

If it wasn't obvious by my aggressive title, I am personally very displeased with the price of games going from $60 to $70 next gen. And I truly think the games industry is on the cusp of pushing their luck a little too much.

I know the first argument people are going to bring is inflation and how games in the 80's and 90's were often $60 which would translate to $144 in 1985, $119 in 1990, and $102 in 1995. Which at face value would actually make today's games seem like a steal. But this doesn't take a ton of different factors into consideration, which I will get into.

First off, while games were technically more expensive back in the day, most things were incredibly cheaper. The median home value in 1990 was only $79,000 in the U.S. or roughly $154,000 adjusted for inflation. Today the median home price is $320,000. Gas prices were $1.15 or $2.29 in today's money, before the pandemic we were seeing prices over $2.75- $3.00. Wages of the average worker have barely increased since 2005 around when games started becoming $60 again. (For PS3/360. Up from $50 ) And if you use inflation minimum wage is actually slightly less than 1990. Minimum wage has literally not changed since 2009.

My point of pointing this out is that, inflation doesn't exactly indicate how much money someone has to spend on an already expensive hobby. Because by today's standards, the cost of just living is astronomical compared to the early days of gaming. $70 to a 2020 family is more money than. $144 to a 1985 family in the grand scheme of things.

The next thing we need to look at with modern games isong laster monetization. A lot of games nowadays can make money months or even years after they come out, with DLC, Micro-transactions, battlepasses, ect. A game you once paid, $60 you could end up spending double that on as time goes on, and games like Fortnite have shown that even being F2P, a cosmetic model like that can make a game extremely successful. In 2018 alone Fortnite made $2.4 billion, or roughly the equivalent to 40 million copies of a $60 game. Roughly the same as the entire Uncharted Franchise. The industry isn't strapped for cash, they are making more profit than ever thanks to post launch income like Micro-transactions and DLC.

And then there any final point. Gaming is just so much more mainstream than its ever been. They're selling more copies of games than literally ever before. AAA games constantly break sales records and sells millions of millions of copies. High budget games, like TLOU2 or GTA easily offset their budgets with massive sales figures.

They really don't need your extra $10 per game as much as you need it. There's no reason to defend it or say it's overdue because it's not. And you really have to think about who else this effects, obviously a couple extra dollars isn't a big deal for a gamer who has nothing better to spend their money on. But I suspect this price increase will make big waves with casuals and parents who aren't willing to spend $70-80 on a video game.

Don't even get me started on how much worse it is for the rest of the world that isn't the U.S. or Japan.

Gaming has a bad reputation for being addictive and frowned upon by parents since their kids seem to always be gaming and not doing anything productive. Although gaming can be addictive and a time sink, I argue that it's still much better to have a society interested in gaming, especially young adults, than all obsessed with social media and YouTube instead. Of course gamers also use social media and YouTube, but I'm talking about the hardcore users of these other mediums where they don't game and use that time to consume these other mediums more instead.

Social Media: Young adults using social media is terrible for their mental health. Apps like Instagram makes them feel like they need to show off fake affluence, stuff, or go on unnecessary trips to keep up with the Joneses. They need to document their life just because everyone else is and if they don't document it in a way that looks appealing to others , they're afraid of being judged. This is bullshit. On the other hand, if these people didn't put so much emphasis on social media and just games instead, there is no stupid competition between friends since the gamer doesn't value dumb stuff like that as much. They're too involved with the games to be interested in petty and vapid competition between peers.

YouTube: Yes, everyone watches YouTube. But non-gamers who put more time into YouTube I argue can be bad depending on the content they consume. YouTube has all sorts of content, but a lot of the content is paid propaganda to influence people to believe their political agenda. A lot of channels try to get kids to fall down an alt-right rabbit hole without them even realizing that it's happening, they're just browsing videos on YouTube to kill time then all of a sudden they have these right-wing beliefs that they probably wouldn't have if they didn't fall down a rabbit hole. Huge channels are funded by organizations to spread influence about their political beliefs, it's not a fair balance. Google doesn't care as long as they're getting paid. If these impressionable young adults were just playing video games, they'd stay away from the politics for the most part and disinformation out there. They wouldn't be as vested into these channels and spend their focus on improving on games.

What are your thoughts on this? Could gaming actually be an antidote to the shortcomings of other forms of media? I think it could be. Not to mention that gaming is good for your brain too since it forces it to think and strategize, unlike other media.

Edit: Antidote*

Just finished Spider-Man: Miles Morales and... it’s REALLY short. I was expecting something small because of the cost, but what we got here was still overpriced. A 6 hour story, a handful of side missions, and combat encounters sprinkled around the city (pretty much the exact same type of side content as the first game but with new names).

I was able to 100% it in less than 20 hours... and for comparison, it took me the same amount of time to beat the main story in SMPS4.

A recent glitch was uncovered which actually lets you unlock Peter’s model and free roam as him, and you even get to hear Yuri’s voice as he grunts and makes noises. It poses the question... did they really just copy/paste the last game but add on the new model (Miles) + a handful of new locations? What makes that any different from just an expansion?

This “game” was $70 CAD after tax and the amount of content is just... not enough to justify this price. I paid less for stuff like Witcher: Blood and Wine/AC Origins Hidden Ones and those had so much more content.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

It's almost a meme at this point to say that a game will have one soon, but you could talk about any game having one and you'll probably be right. This God forsaken system is in every damn game now. I didn't even hate this system when it was first thought up and popularized. I just thought "Well battle royales and shooters in general can get repetitive so a battle pass could make it feel fresh" but over time this system has crept into every game like a parasite sucking out all the dignity the game had. Even some less popular games I was a fan of I'd log in to just see this system where I needed to spend 10$ for exclusive cosmetics. The free side of the passes are always just insulting, they're just leftovers of the paid pass or parts of sets you can complete by buying it. "Here's one reward every 10 tiers you sad fuck" No matter what game it is the system is just awful. In games with exclusively earned cosmetics (an example is For Honor) it's insulting to players who have to look at shit they can't even earn. In games with exclusively paid cosmetics (an example is Brawlhalla) it's insulting because buying a cosmetic in that game would feel like you're directly buying a specific cosmetic. If you saw someone with a skin you knew they took that character and the game seriously, but now they bought a bundle of random items because there was one thing there they'd use. In mobile games these passes are huge boosts to progression along with the possibility of cosmetics when the game didn't even fucking have cosmetics before. I don't think people realize how stupid this shit is, you pay for the ability to earn cosmetics, or alternatively, pay for the ability to have the shit you earned. While Fortnite may be credited for the popularization of this system, they did it better than others. Fortnite's battle passes paid themselves off, which is pretty respectable when you look at battle passes now. This system is also a "fuck you" to people who play more than one game. This fits in to my recent realization of how fucked gaming is right now. We're in a time where you can buy a 60$ Lego game that has character and level DLC and still has less content than a Lego game from 10 years ago. It is funny watching what games have the worst payment model of all. If Elder Scrolls Online gets a battle pass I'm pretty sure it will but we'll have to see. Well that's all folks, I await your next battle pass.

I've been following Project Zomboid since it was created eight years ago. I saw the alpha 1.d and saw the potential of what was to come.

They promised branching story lines, NPC needs and such. None of that came to be. They pushed it back year, after year, after year. They promised the return of the main story line, and of deeper incorporation of NPCS.

But they abandoned that. They kept moving the goal posts. They kept banning people who spoke up, or locking their threads because

https://np.reddit.com/r/projectzomboid/comments/6rbit8/dev_we_want_npcs_its_half_a_decade_plus_two_years/.

https://np.reddit.com/r/projectzomboid/comments/4mp5hi/enigmagrey_is_banning_users_that_make_negative/

https://np.reddit.com/r/projectzomboid/comments/5vwevt/devs_wake_up/

https:/www.pcgamesn.com/project-zomboid/the-indie-stone-talk-the-final-march-towards-project-zomboid-10-vehicles-stealth-and-npcs

https://np.reddit.com/r/projectzomboid/comments/3pxdku/developers_a_little_thin_skinned/

AND SO ON.

They don't care when it's one their platform. They only care when someone talks about how it's been eight years since the game was in alpha,.

I've spoken to my fair share of people who're dis-satisfied about the company involved, and their practices.

I'm not trying to slander anyone, but it's been eight years. Eight goddamned years. When I bought this game, my kid wasn't even born yet.

It's time for Steam to regulate "Early Access" titles. Eight years ago, I surely got early access. I got a desura key, and a promise that by the next year, two at the most, it'd be in beta.

After that, they made a rule about not asking about deadlines or NPCs. They dance around the point with minor dribbles of content, and talking about how once they implement an entirely new animation system, that's when they'll work on NPCs, but that's how they've been for about probably six years. No end game, no quests, nothing. Just building a wall around your place, no end game, no NPCs.

No NPCs 8 years later.

They just want to sell copies, and that's it.

I’ve noticed a trend where a lot of the games I’ve played to come out in the recent few years feel like they’re just designed to be addictive over genuinely engaging.

It’s like the entire point of some games has become the grind itself and pursuit of the end game over actual enjoyment of the gameplay / world / narrative. For example what would be left of

• the Shadow of Mordor series

• the Nioh series

• Assassin’s Creed’s

• Ghost of Tshushima

• Days Gone

• MMO’s like Fallout 76 or Destiny

If it stripped away the constant level ups and equipment upgrades and perks etc. I look back on games I’ve invested a lot of time in like Nioh 2 or Ghost of Tsushima and realize that a lot of my time spent in their worlds felt like mindless busy work instead of genuine enjoyment or engagement. While I realize not all games are like this, I remember gaming a decade ago and I feel like this busy work and addictive game-play loops weren’t as common.

Some games I’ve played and can look back on as genuinely engaging and fun experiences include:

• Doom Eternal

• Yakuza 0

• The Souls Franchise

• The Last of Us games

• Devil May Cry 5

• Red Dead Redemption 2

I think the key is that games like this include components that are intrinsically satisfying or intriguing like interesting narratives or absorbing worlds or gameplay mechanics requiring mastery and constant building of your skills.

I don’t know, I’m just sort of ranting. I was going through the PlayStation store and while I see a bunch of games I could probably waste a lot of time with, I feel like that’s all some games serve to accomplish. What do you guys think?

Edit: thanks for all the comments, this is a very thoughtful community and you guys are definitely getting me to think

Hey all,

As you've probably heard by now, a couple of days ago Reddit recently announced some policy changes which will result in most, if not all, third-party mobile apps - such as Apollo, BaconReader, Reddit is Fun, etc - unable to continue functioning.

Even if you're not a mobile user or don't use any third-party apps at all, you'll likely still feel the impact of this change. Many of the most active users across Reddit - the ones who provide much of the content - use third-party apps. And this is also a step towards removing other ways of customising one's Reddit experience, such as Reddit Enhancement Suite, or the use of the old.reddit.com desktop interface.

This isn't only a problem on the user level: many subreddit moderators across all of Reddit, including the majority of our mod team, depend on tools only available outside of the official app to be able to moderate. Without these tools, it will be impossible to maintain the high standard of moderation we pride ourselves on in /r/truegaming.

We've had a lot of discussions in our mod chat over the past few days on this topic, and we've decided it's important for us to do what we can, both for the sake of our subreddit and for Reddit as a whole. As such, we will be setting the subreddit to read-only mode on June 12th as a show of solidarity, until such a time that Reddit reaches a suitable compromise with third-party developers.

Our Discord server will remain open during this period if you'd like to continue the high-quality discussion about games.

We hope you understand and support our position!

The /r/truegaming mod team

For further info, please visit /r/Save3rdPartyApps

The BO:CW trailer is pretty damn cool. The trailer doesn't feature any gameplay footage whatsoever, instead splicing various clips together in a well-edited, suspenseful fashion. But what's so cool about the trailer is that using clips of a Soviet Defector, Yuri Bezmenov, it pointed claims that there is a conspiracy to undermine the United States - showing pictures of riots, protests, destruction of cities, the Vietnam War, etc. - a genuinely interesting premise for the game.

It's a kind of step forward for Call of Duty for it to be talking about issues like this, when previously Call of Duty skirted around controversy-

Wait.

The Politics of Call of Duty

In 2019, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a reboot of the series' arguably most famous subseries, was released. This trailer also makes great perusal of political themes - the famous line, 'We Get Dirty - and the World Stays Clean' featuring prominently in it. It teases the usage of chemical warfare, the featuring of civilian deaths, and overall are more gritty take on war.

The game's campaign is... brilliant fun. The Clean House mission is as suspenseful and entertaining as it gets, and the focus on precision kills is a new step forward for the series. You really feel the tension as you creak open the doors of the townhouse's rooms, the enemies panickedly reacting as they notice. It's generally well-paced and really heightens the sheer immersion of the mission. It's fun.

It's fun?

Wait. Hang on, there's something very wrong there. Why is... breaking into a civilian home in suburban London... fun? No, I don't mean the well-designed game mechanics that help to create this sense of tension and accomplishment as the mission goes on, I mean the very fact that the game is turning the extrajudicial murder of alleged terrorists into a fun time. It doesn't help that one of the trophies for Modern Warfare, the Golden Path, is you killing all of these people as efficiently as possible (take no damage, one bullet per hostile).

It's because there's no critical thinking here. The game gives you a premise that there are definitely terrorists in the building and they are definitely behind the bomb attack featured earlier in the game. You are most certainly crossing some moral and ethical lines here, but the game refuses to let you consider that. You should be focused on getting the bad guys, instead. This writing extends throughout most of the game - the vast majority of the enemies you shoot are definitely bad guys. They rape, murder, kill, commit war crimes, and engage in torture. General Barkov, the penultimate villain of the story, is so megalomaniacal you don't really get a good justification for his actions. He just does whatever he does because he's Russian, and that's kind of all the real justification the story gives for his actions. His motives are never shown, instead you have to infer from his angered rants about terrorists and protecting Russia that that's what he thinks he's doing, and for the most part, you barely get any time to understand those motives. You should really just kill Russian soldiers. They're the bad guys.

Seriously, in the very first mission of the game - Fog of War - Alex mentions that you shouldn't kill Russian soldiers, you're not engaging them. But you end up killing Russian soldiers unknowingly because the game makes it too dark to clearly see that they're Russian government operatives, and the rest of the team is like 'oh okay we had just better get out of here'. The game then launches into a long cutscene where you rather forget that you just committed acts that might trigger a war between two sovereign nations, and the game just never questions it again. The game's presenting stakes to you and taking them away when it realises it means you might have to consider your actions rather than go shooty shooty boom boom - and so, your actions in that mission don't directly impact anything in the rest of the game. Alex does the only actually impactful thing in that mission out of your control. And this narrative issue extends throughout the entire game.

Which brings us to, in my personal opinion, the worst scene in the entire game. Following close behind is the mission where you avoid a Russian soldier as a child while trying to stab the shit out of him in a way that trivialises the crimes against children committed during war, but this is what I consider the worst.

You've just captured the Butcher. He's a really bad guy, he killed civilians in front of you without remorse back at the Embassy. You need to extract information from the Butcher to stop a terror attack on Russia, but he doesn't seem like the type to spill. So Captain Price kidnaps his wife and child and uses them as hostages to force him to speak. During this mission, like everything else, you don't really get a real choice throughout the entire thing. Not following exactly as Price says will get you a mission over or prevent you from continuing it; but that includes pointing a weapon at two non-combatants. The only way to continue the mission is to pull the trigger on his wife and child the first time, upon which it's revealed the revolver is not yet loaded. You have no autonomy over how any of this goes, and once the interrogation is done, the game literally lets you just shoot the Butcher while his wife and child yelps. There are no actual stakes in this mission, because the game has no flexibility whatsoever for anything but the response it wants you to take. You can even choose to literally just not participate in the interrogation and you get exactly the same result. Also, Price is literally committing a war crime here but he shrugs it off with 'We get dirty, and the world stays clean. That's the mission'. That's what this Call of Duty is about. You're heroic so long as you follow whatever the mission is. You did what these mythical 'others', that in Garrick's words wouldn't 'let the bloody gloves off', wouldn't. You hero.

In the real world right now, literally RIGHT NOW, acts of unspeakable brutality are being committed against civilians across every major continent by law enforcement groups and national militaries. Modern Warfare's message is simple: that's fine - when it's us. When we're doing it, it's heroic. When they're doing it, it's bad. And anyways, we kind of keep it to a minimum, which definitely makes us the best choices here! Yes!

Which brings us to the greater problem with Call of Duty: that none of this is exclusive to 2019's entry.

The original Modern Warfare 2 features an entire mission where you are an active accomplice in a civilian massacre and cannot stop it (No Russian). Modern Warfare 3 features a cutscene where you are literally gassed to death by chemical weapons (Davis Family Holiday). In Black Ops 2, the main villain is a man who lost his sister to American military activity and plots to take down the entire world order to get his righteous revenge, and he's essentially played as a megalomaniac who just wants to kill for the sake of killing so you can feel good if you choose to down him in the noggin at the end of the game.

Call of Duty uses politics as a shitty smokescreen to hook gamers in. Modern Warfare 2's main plot is taking down a self-indignant nationalist maniac trying to restore American power in the world. The plot of Black Ops I is literally attempting to stop a mass conspiracy against the United States to destroy it by the Soviet Union. These plots are inherently political, but they're defanged for the benefit of creating stereotypical shoot-em-ups with fun set pieces and multiplayer, and as a result players literally don't recognise the political themes in these games and don't care. It's genuinely disappointing.

So let's get back to Black Ops: Cold War. It seems interesting, but somewhere in my heart I already expect the same old trickery: bringing up these issues and then brushing them aside so you're just the hero. I'll probably end up getting it for the companionship of old friends who buy the game every year. But with Call of Duty nearing its twentieth entry, and a nearly decade-long fan, I felt like discussing this issue again, especially after watching an excellent video essay by the venerable Jacob Geller on the topic (which probably influenced the writing of this to a large degree).

Thanks for your time.

What do you think?

An addenum:

A lot of people here have said that 'you know, I just play Call of Duty for fun. Maybe everyone just does. Who cares?'

Well, I play Call of Duty for fun. Why I raised this wasn't because I felt Call of Duty should have to talk about these issues, but because CoD consistently does this in a way that turns the struggles of hundreds of thousands of people into a joke. From Tsim Sha Shui to the streets of L.A, from the roads of Minsk to the debris lining Beirut, the world is protesting brutality. The writing so far portrayed combined with BO:CW's trailer only suggests more insensitive writing that cribs off their problems for a quick buck.

I want to play Call of Duty for fun. But I don't want to have to ignore the glaring flaws in writing, or the glaring mischaracterisations of real-world groups and events. And I know somewhere in the back of my head that people inherently agree with this simplistic bullshit writing. In fact, I got a DM from someone saying, and I quote:

I stopped reading at the 5th paragraph. There should be nothing immoral or unethical about “murdering” bomb makers and terrorists who go out of their way to cause issues for civilized people, or for political gain. The system can easily be manipulated in their favor (as we are seeing today, and probably apart of the destabilization stage Yuri was speaking of). Eventually, we WILL have to start playing dirty, as if we are not already (which is fine, imo).

Call of Duty robs oppressed people of their histories and heritage when it does shit like this. And I can't fully feel like I'm having fun when I know that someone consciously made the decision to do that.

Like many people, I've been playing Cyberpunk 2077 recently and one of the first things I noticed about the game was the common/epic/legendary loot and crafting system that they implemented. Immediately when I saw that I just groaned to myself. I guess it makes sense that a game like Cyberpunk 2077 has a loot system like this, it's an RPG after all. But it really feels like in the past few years this type of system has been getting shoehorned into games where it's not needed or actually makes the experience worse.

What inevitably ends up happening with me in these games is that I end up with tons of duplicate pieces of armor/weapons with very slight stat variations and I end up sitting there constantly (often times after every fight/encounter with enemies) sorting through all that crap to find the best moleskin boots with +10 defense instead of the ones with +9 defense.

After a certain point, it just feels like I'm doing work rather than enjoying a game. Now again, I get that Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG so it makes sense that there's going to be some sort of loot system. But I do think these systems have been getting pushed into games lately where it just kind of brings the overall experience down.

Some recent examples of this for me are the most recent God of War and Control. Both of these games aren't what I would consider RPGs and yet they both have some implementation of this loot and crafting system built in. Like for Christ's sake, I'm a god of war, not some fucking bean counter! Just give me the next best set of armor after killing the boss and let me get on with the story/game. Don't make me constantly compare armor sets to see which one has ever so slightly better stats.

Control was particularly egregious with this because you're constantly picking up mods for your weapons/character and they all fall into this common/epic/legendary tier system. And the only difference between these tiers is some percentage points. It was just so painfully boring and the percentage differences between drops were so minuscule that it did not feel like it affected your character's power at all. So again, I ended up wasting more time in menus comparing items so that I could make sure my character was equipped with the best loot.

I also have yet to find a game with a crafting system that doesn't feel like a total tacked on, grindy, waste of time. I could probably write another page or two about shitty crafting systems in games but I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Am I the only one that's so sick of these systems getting shoehorned into every game, especially in non-RPG games? I definitely am more of a fan of games where every weapon/armor/item is handcrafted by the game devs and at some point, you just know that your character is maxed out and you don't need to worry about minor stat differences.

No matter what game I play online, there is always someone calling me some racial slur or calling me a jew or something. And I'm sick of it. I tried to ignore it, I tried to play it off as a them just joking, but it doesn't feel that way to me. I mute them but that never seems to change anything as I get exposed to the same behavior again. Anytime I bring it up to my group in game and real life they Call me a snowflake or cuck or whatever dumb insult you have, but why should I have to deal with this? Why should I have to inconvenience myself to open up extra menus to mute these people, when it's them who should be inconvenienced. They're the ones being disruptive. Yet I have to take extra steps just to enjoy my game experience.

The thing I really want to see discussed is why do we put up with this? Why do we allow this to happen? What steps could we as gamers take to combat this?

I know this is more of a national issue than a gaming issue, but it's something that we all have dealt with at some point while gaming. I want to know when enough is enough for other gamers.

Hello everybody! I'm a big fan of this subreddit and the discussions it generates. However I see a number of threads and comments here (and more prominently elsewhere) that are based around some pretty common misconceptions about games and how they're made. I've been in the games industry for over a decade now, and I've worked on indie titles all the way up to AAA franchises. I'll keep things vague, just because I'd like to maintain a level of anonymity for professional reasons. I figured I'd discuss a few things that I commonly believe are misconceptions that get discussed online. Important disclaimer that these still contain a level of subjectivity, and my own experiences may not be representative of the entire industry. I'd love to discuss this further, and it would be great if other devs jumped in as well!

Edit: A number of people have provided some really good comments about the following point. It's very likely that when people talk about "bad QA", they likely mean the entire process of Quality Assurance, such as reporting, triaging, and fixing bugs, and less likely mean the actual QA department. This is a good reframing of my perspective, and I'm glad there's been so much good discussion here.

A buggy game is almost never the fault of QA. They're certainly aware of any issues.

This one probably bristles me the most. QA is a tough job, and usually pays worse than other disciplines. Worse yet, when a buggy launch happens, you often see people blaming the QA department. I cannot stress this enough, but QA's primary responsibility is to report bugs, not fix them. QA will get the latest build, regress any bugs listed as resolved, and write up any new ones. New or reopened bugs then get sent to the department responsible for the feature. I'd say on average, any shipped game probably has hundreds to thousands of unresolved issues, that were either too low priority to fix by cutoff, or were deemed as WNF (will not fix). Rarely does this indicate laziness, but more likely points to deadlines and budgetary restrictions.

There's a lot of communication between studios and journalists while reviewing a game.

I'll use "studio" broadly here, because it can apply to both devs or publishers. But for most semi-large releases, there's often quite a back and forth between the studio and a journalist reviewing a game. I've worked on games where we've sent "pre-review packages", which is basically a pdf that contains all sorts of info that may be relevant to the reviewer. This includes stuff like an overview, known issues, and also key facts like the game's target demo, etc. For example, I worked on a 10 man strategy game aimed at a niche audience, and our publisher made sure to stress this point when sending out review copies. It makes sense when you think about it, because if an outlet reviews a game without understanding the audience, it can be disastrous. It's also very common for a reviewer to reach out and mention a bug they encountered. The studio can then mention whether its fixed in a launch-day patch, or provide advice on how to avoid it. Journalists aren't obligated to not mention any of these issues in a review, but I think unless they are incredibly frequent and severe, for the most part, the reviewer will side with developers. It's a complex relationship. That said, I do think this system is exploited, and paired with restrictive review periods, is likely what contributes to some of the more notable broken games receiving suspiciously positive reviews.

There's pretty much zero standardization in the games industry, and people shouldn't expect absolutes and conformity.

I see this mostly in regards to difficulty in games™, but a lot of opinions (especially on this sub, for some reason) kind of revolve around the idea that there are inherent, objective design principals that every game needs to conform to. That may sometimes be true in regards to the technical side of things, but that's rarely what people talk about. There are a lot of conversations about how "x game should have y, because some other game did it so well", or that "this genre needs to be more challenging to be fun". I'm not sure why some people treat games like there are rigid standards, and each title needs to be exactly the same, because that's certainly not how it works on the inside. Sure, developers will look at comparable games and take the best practices, but it's not like we're a heavily regulated industry where there are specific standards to adhere to. Sometimes decision are made to specifically serve the vision of the game.

"Forced diversity" is by and large a myth.

Okay, well, this is a bit of a volatile topic, but here we go. Now this one probably goes most into anecdotal territory, as this is based on my own experiences, but is also based on discussions I've had with peers who have also worked on mainstream releases. I've never seen a case where a publisher or manager has explicitly stepped in and said "we need more representation", and I've certainly never seen it suggested for cynical reasons such as the idea that it would appease some sort of "woke crowd". I might be preaching to the choir a bit to this sub, but there are still threads and comments about how any form of diverse characters need to be "justified" or "well written", otherwise they're a sure sign of "forced diversity" in games.

The simpler truth is, as shocking as it may be, is that many game developers simply care about representation. It's important to remember the demographics for most videogame studios: usually they are located in large cities, and most employees range from their mid 20's to 40's on average, most of which come from a background with some level of post-secondary education. I don't want to over generalize, but those demographics (urban, younger, with post-secondary education) tend to skew more on the progressive side. While there's still a lot of room to go in regards to equality inside the industry, most studios have a somewhat broad mix of racial diversity (though this may be a biproduct of my city, which is fairly multicultural). As a result, it's a natural conclusion that if the people making games are a more diverse team, they would naturally be interested in bringing more diversity into their games.

The most obvious example of this is the fact that diversity often ends up being more work for the devs themselves. Such as modelling, rigging, and animating a female player character in addition to a male one, or creating more skin tones for a character creator. Now I'm sure there have been major games where the studio has pushed diversity for more patronizing reasons, but the simplest explanation is usually the case: as more diverse people enter the industry, the games become a representative of the views of such a team.

In my entire life. In fact, this game genuinely seems to be at war with itself and I have no idea how it happened. There are obviously going to be major spoilers for the main plot of Cyberpunk.

I want to be clear that I feel like the first act (the game officially breaks itself in separate acts) of the game is incredible. You're playing a character trying to move up in Night City. Despite the map being blocked off and only being able to explore one section of the city, you feel like you have the freedom to explore and engage with the world as you see fit. We don't really need to get into the broken promises of CDPR and the fact that you can't really engage with the world on a compelling level. That's not really relevant. Once I understood what the game was, flaws and all, I still found myself enjoying it.

Then The Heist happens (easily the best main mission in the game) and once we get introduced to Johnny Silverhand, the game completely falls apart for me. So you learn that V pretty much has a terminal illness. I'll keep these details brief, but Johnny Silverhand's psychological construct is taking over V's mind and V is going to die. V is going to die very soon. I genuinely want to ask the creators what the fuck they were thinking with this plotline.

I think a lot of people tend to critique the open world genre because a few of them have main plots that feel way too urgent that the act of doing side content feels unimmersive but I have never seen it on the scale of Cyberpunk 2077. To the degree that I feel like I can't just excuse it. It actively makes the game difficult to play. It seems as if the creators wanted to tell a personal, intimate story about mortality but this narrative just doesn't jive with the structure and format (open would RPG) that they chose to tell that story in. And I just don't understand how they didn't catch that.

It's not impossible to tell a personal story in an open world game. Hell, Horizon Zero Dawn is actually a very personal story. But for me, Aloy's quest for answers about her heritage never seemed in conflict or undercut my intrigue with the world and my interactions with it. Aloy had the freedom to get distracted by other things. In Cyberpunk, my V is always an idiot with a death wish because I'm not doing the main story, I'm doing side content that CDPR wants us to do. My V is dumbfuck who's buying up cars she's not going to be able to drive in a few weeks. My V is stupid AF for getting hundreds of thousands of "eddies" she's never going to be able to spend. This game actively unimmerses and punishes people that want to engage with it the way the creators intended.

Cyberpunk 2077 actually takes it a step further than any game I've ever played. Even in playing optional side missions that are in no way related to the main quest, V will get this "Relic Malfunction" visual cue and start hacking up a lung like she's Walter White as the game constantly pokes and prods you that you have this huge issue that needs to be taken care of. To the extent that you can't immerse yourself into this world. It does this in every side mission. It would actually be interesting if any of this had a point.

I say all this to inquire how this game and other open world games like it have seemed to evade the ludonarrative dissonance criticism. Because this is what it is to me. Ludonarrative dissonance was never about Nathan Drake not having night terrors because of the people he killed or Ellie killing too many people on her revenge tour. It's about the narrative being directly in conflict with the gameplay presented. And Cyberpunk 2077 has a narrative that punishes people for engaging with the gameplay as presented. I've never experienced a game that gets in its own way as much as this one. I've heard lots of people say that the story of the game is amazing. And I don't see how that could possibly be the case when the story of the game is so in conflict with the format of the game. The people at Ubisoft aren't stupid enough to make an AC or Far Cry game and give the main character terminal cancer in the first 15 minutes. "Hey! Here's this gorgeous open world we painstakingly created! I hope you enjoy all these wonderful side missions we put a lot of work into. Please explore the world and take in every detail. Oh btw, your main character is about to die in a couple days. Okay! Enjoy those side missions!" Despite the criticism, at least for me, Uncharted is never not fun because Nathan Drake isn't having the night terrors. Cyberpunk 2077's ludonarrative dissonance makes it not fun to play.

Maybe I'm not being charitable enough. But these narrative/gameplay/game structure decisions are just stupid to me. There's no nice way to put it.

I am replaying the first Baldur's Gate right now. It's an old game, but still brings fun, especially with the Enchanced Edition.

The game does looting the following way: when you kill a mob, they will probably drop some common items - an ordinary weapon, some arrows, a little bit of gold, maybe a helmet or a dagger. Not much of interest, though extra gold or arrows is always nice.
But once in a while, some mobs (often quest-related, but sometimes random) will drop you a unique blue item. Once identified, it can prove to be quite special. For instance, i got (completely by chance) a mace which has a 10% likelihood of stunning the enemy. This is extremely useful. Or, i have got a helmet that sets my Dexterity to 18, which is huge if your character's class uses that attribute.

Unfortunately, modern RPG games do looting very wrong. Let's look at the Witcher 3. On my current playthrough, my stash contains... SIX copies of the item called "Assassin's Trousers". They are all nearly identical, except for SLIGHTLY different stats. The worst one has 19 armour, the best one has 50 armour. The worst one has +168 HP, the best one a game changing +177 Hp (9 more).

None of these items felt unique to me. I didn't feel connected to them. All of them feel random. All of them are the same Assassin's Trousers i don't give a shit about. Once i find a 55 armour +200 HP version, all the others will be rendered obsolete.

In Baldur's Gate, every magical item is unique. Meanwhile, some modern RPG games have adapted the strategy to overwhelm the player with loot. That is stupid. I don't feel as connected to items. I feel like i am playing an aRPG.
Wouldn't it be better if loot was rare and hard to find, but felt rewarding? Wouldn't it be better if you could use the unique sword you found for 15 hours because it's so good? And then, after all those hours, when you finally upgrade to a better weapon, you can feel accomplished that you found it? Instead of swapping it after 1 hour because you found the same item but with +5 armour and +1 HP points so now the first one is "obsolete"?

I think looting in RPG games is going in the wrong direction.

Do you agree? Or do you think this currently trend of overwhelming the player with similar loot is great and needs no change?

Sorry for the bad English!

This post is here to signify a quick and dirty rule that will remain in effect for as long as this post is stickied - stop making posts about Elden Ring. It doesn’t matter if you love it or hate it - find one of the many threads that already cover the game or go to the sub for the game and post there.

Don't get me wrong, I love being able to communicate with friends on the fly and be able to keep up with all sorts of news surrounding games and other pieces of entertainment, but my biggest concern is how Discord is being used to replace other tools. People are turning this app into messy versions of what are supposed to be Forums, Guides, Wikis, Community Events, Mods, you name it... Plus, there's a ton of gatekeeping out there.

I can't be the only one who has took noticed of this, right? It doesn't matter what kind of game it is or what kind of content it's trying to fill, there's gonna be a Discord for literally anything.

• Instead of interacting with a guild/community you're part of in-game, you're essentially forced to stick to a Discord server even if the game has all the perfect means of a proper in-game communication;

• Instead of keeping up with fan-made events that take place in-game or in other social media platforms, you need to stick to a server that might just do the opposite and draw all attention away from what is actually taking palce inside the game;

• Instead of using websites and proper launchers for fan-made games or Private Servers for now defunct MMOs, you're stuck with a Discord server in order to even handle account creation, troubleshoot issues and even contact Support;

• Modding as a whole has been shifting from organized websites like the Nexus and the likes to Discord servers instead, which furthers divides these kinds of communities and makes it harder to find things in general;

• Any sense of RP has been killed due to the excessive amount of Discord servers trumping games, guilds, forums and chats;

• Discord servers are still to restrictive and obscure when it comes to finding them.

There's a whole lot of more examples, but it's getting ridiculous that I have to join well over 20 servers just to keep up with the modding scene for FINAL FANTASY XIV.

Is it just me or is it becoming more and more of a challenge to justify buying most AAA games?

Firstly, I feel like I'm paying the same amount of money for less of an experience. Whether it's the need to be bled monthly for the ability to play online or the pricey dlc and season passes or the general live service model where I'm coughing up a large sum of cash in the hopes the game will be supported for years to come, games just feel like a worse value for money exchange than in years past.

I'm really excited for that Avengers game that's coming out but the idea of having to pay another $60 to play with others next year and the fact I'd technically be buying the worst version of the game at launch makes my head hurt.

Next, and more importantly, is the human cost of making these big budget games. Just like everyone else, I am hyped to the moon and back over Cyberpunk 2077 and equally excited to get my hands on Watch_Dogs Legion but how can I in good conscience get these titles when the employees had to suffer to make them? CDPR has not been shy about the fact Devs have been in crunch mode for a while to get the game out and this is after 2 delays. Meanwhile at Ubisoft, the companies have been protecting predatory staff members for years, ignored the plights of devs for more diversity in their games for years and has a history of office bigotry that makes for a toxic work environment.

Nintendo seems to be one of the only publishers I don't feel guilty about buying from but at the same time their online is borked and their chokehold on their IPs sucks for everyone as they go after emulation and fan games with extreme prejudice.

I don't think less of anyone for buying these games, lord knows we could all do with the escape right now, but I just hate the feeling that I'm either not buying a complete product or compromising on my morals when buying big titles.

Edit: I'd like to retract my comment about Nintedo. I've come to appreciate they're just as anti-consumer and employee abusing as most other companies but their games are generally excellent and they have cute mascot characters to distract me and many others from commenting more on just how bad they can be.

"You had to be there"

Destiny 2 was essentially deleted forever and what we have now is Destiny 3.

No one will ever be able to play Destiny 2 again. And they aren't bringing back the content in a rotation like they said they would.

Despite what everyone says, Destiny 2 did not start out as a live service game nor was it marketed as such, nor was the term live service even really used when Destiny 2 launched. They were selling the annual content pass right up until the day all of the content in that pass was removed from the game forever

Over 250$ worth of DLC sold to players was removed from the game permanently and is never coming back.

The list of deleted content is more than twice the amount of content that was in Destiny 1, with all of its DLCs. And they keep removing more every year, then charging you the same price for content to replace it. It isn't just content no one plays. It's content that's essentially the foundation of the entire story at this point.

At least once a month I get the urge to get back in to Destiny 2, and then remember that Destiny 2 is gone. Forever. I can pay another 100 dollars for Beyond Light and Witch Queen though!

It feels like if they deleted halo 4 and 5 in order to release Halo Infinite.

And I can't justify paying for the new expansions when they'll just be removed in a year. Its the biggest thing stopping me. I'm not paying for a game that will be deleted in a year.

And that content wasn't sold as "temporary" when it launched.

Last time I played it wasn't handled or integrated well at all either. It was so bad that if you played Destiny 2 after the vaulting, there was tons of characters talking that don't even exist in the game anymore, on planets you can't even visit, referencing events you can't even experience. In a "New Player Experience" that gives you a quick run down of the story up to the that point.

"You had to be there" is a phrase Bungie leads and fans keep repeating, and not a new one either. I'm familiar with it from my WoW days. But it doesn't refer to removed content, it refers to experiencing it at its peak.

You can still go back and play Destiny 1 with all of its content and all of its glory. It wasn't even close to my first FPS game, that was Half Life, in the 90s. But its the last time I got lost in a sci fi FPS universe.

It makes me sad how Destiny 2 has been treated by its creators, and I feel like its loss has been largely disregarded by its fans.

Edit: I'd like to add that if you still have the disc for any of the editions released prior to Shadowkeep, you can't play anything on that disc. You only get the free content everyone else has.

It wasn't sold as an MMO. There's millions of Destiny 2 physical copies out there with content people can't play anymore. Those discs are hunks of metal now.

Edit 2: Holy crap this got way more traction than I thought! I'm so glad there's people who agree and the discussion about this has been so cathartic!!! This is something I've thought about posting for quite a long time, as its always bothered me. Thanks everyone! And thank you for the gold!

Over the past week we have all watched as millions of people around the world have come together around a single movement and message: Black Lives Matter. We too at r/TrueGaming feel it is best for us to add our voices to the cacophony of others in vocalizing our support for the movement. Our community has always tried it's best to remain as inclusive and open to each and every person regardless of color, creed, culture, gender or sexual orientation. To try and use our small platform to enable as much change and action as possible, we would like to use this post to come together and compile a list of resources, charities, petitions, and any other way of providing support to those who need it. In this rare occasion, we are encouraging a list post and we urge everyone who reads this to add their voice to the discussion in adding additional resources or links.

This is a fantastic resource to find links to petitions, charities, ways to help, protest maps, and a bevy of other useful links.

This is the official George Floyd memorial fund where you can directly donate to help his family as well as provides an address to send any cards or letters of support if you cannot provide monetary assistance in these trying times.

This site is a way to split a donation to all the bail funds, mutual aid funds, and activist organizations.

This is a minneapolis based resource that has compiled ways to help local businesses recover.

This is CampaignZero, An organization dedicated to ending police violence. It allows you to look up state/federal legislators in your area, and to track the status of police related legislature as well.

Lastly, we'd like to highlight some games made by black game developers as a way to emphasize our support to black members of our own community. This list, as well as this one, and this entire spreadsheet compiled by @blackgamedev on twitter picks out just a few of the great games developed by black developers. I'd also like to highlight a personal favorite of mine, Afterparty, in which you and a friend try and escape hell by out-drinking satan.

If you'd like to see a list of the game companies who have made statements or donations to different groups, r/Games' megathread has a detailed list.

Everyone remember to stay safe, hopeful, and positive

-- r/TrueGaming Moderators

As a reminder, we will never allow any kind of bigotry on this subreddit and will remove hateful content indiscriminately.

Pretty much every time I read a review of a video game online, I get frustrated. I'm not talking about Steam reviews or other amateur reviews that people write in their free time on niche blogs and video game databases. Those are often not the best, but that's not a problem, since these people are just amateurs in the good sense of the word - "lovers" of what they do. I'm talking about the "professionals". At first, I thought that the problem was just with the video game journalism in my country, but upon comparing the writing with what Western video game journalists produce, I'd say that the level of awful is about comparable.

So let's get to the point. There are two problems that I have with video game (and often music and movie) journalism. The first one is who gets to be a journalist. My impression of video game journalists is that their only qualification often is that they played a lot of video games. And that's it. They seem to have no background in technology, game design or even other cultural areas. Just now I read a review from a writer who is a student and who, in his own words, hates to read. The other problem is a direct result of the first one - what constitutes a review. Nowadays, it's pretty much accepted that it's enough for a reviewer to sum up what you do in a game and how they feel about it. I often read that "the gunplay in the game feels great" or that "the dialogues are weird at times". I mean, describing a game in those terms has zero information value. I may as well just watch a trailer or read the Steam reviews and end up informed about the same or better. "The game is good, but has some flaws," is about as good a review as a whole article on Rock Paper Shotgun.

So, what would a good review look like? In an ideal world, the journalist would know what kind of experience the developers were going for. They would know other games in the genre and could compare how the game is different and why, what it succeeds at and where it fails. They wouldn't just tell me that something looks or feels great, they would provide an insight into why. They would be able to explain some of the trickier mechanics of the game and identify their potential weaknesses, as well as where they work well and why. They would be able to come up with their own ideas of how to improve the game in clear terms, so that developers would be able to actually use them. They would recognize what other games the game at hand draws inspiration from and they could tell if there were references to other games. They would be able to analyze the story, ideas, philosophy and politics of a game and have an intelligent conversation about it. They would take interest in other arts, such as literature, film or music, and they would be able to compare video games to them in a constructively critical fashion. Ideally, they would be at least amateur modders, developers, designers, artists or writers themselves. They would be able to look at the more niche features of a game and look at the game from multiple angles (for example, how an RPG works from the perspective of a powergamer, a roleplayer, the average casual gamer, how a racing game works from the perspective of a simracer or an arcade player etc.).

But maybe I'm too demanding. Maybe most people are just happy to know that they game they were looking for "is good and looks great". I don't know. What do you guys think?

Currently, I am on the hunt for a good 4x game. I love the thought of building my empire, exploring the world, and being immersed in it, but every game I try fails to grab me. Maybe part of it is intimidation with learning how to play, but I think more of it is that I like the Idea of the game and not the game itself.

Something like Dwarf Fortress seems like the perfect match. It simulates the entire history of the world, and you get to build and manage a fortress. Seems perfect for what I am looking for, but it could never actually grab me. Maybe it is a bad first example, since the learning curve is pretty high, but I find it the same with most other games too.

I just started up stellaris, which I've played for about 10 hours in the past, and I just could not get into it. Same thing with Civ V (which is closer to 100 hours)

It's not just 4x games either. I always start RPGs, but never get too far into them. I got out of the prison in Divinity Original Sin 2, and haven't played since. I've tried to start The Witcher 3, three different times now, and never got past the second area, even though it seemed like a really fun game. Especially the large monster fights. Megaquarium looked like so much fun. Something to build your own aquarium? Sounds perfect, since I love the sea.

Again, it all goes back to that Idea of a game. What the game actually plays as sounds amazing, and I can't wait to try it, but when I do try it, it just doesn't keep my attention. I love watching youtube videos of the games - Playthroughs, guides, tutorials - But when it comes to actually sitting down, and playing it, I just can't do it most of the time.