All of us old jags, who grew with up to the sixth generation of consoles, are facing an appaling reality: as time goes by, the disinterest in videogames grows bigger within ourselves. Is it because we get older? Because the industry has changed?

Of course, getting older is a fact. We grow more selective in our taste and get less free time, so we choose more carefully what to invest our time into. Thus, even though we now should be able to play more, we actually decide to play less. And if we count that nowadays we get in a single year 10 times more games than in the whole life of the sixth and seventh generation consoles, then we get even more selective. We also value games for other things, remember when you were young and your Pokemon only knew attacking moves instead of looking into stats and strategic thinking like you do now. We get more picky on the details, which has also been boosted by the higher power of the consoles. So, in all, getting older affects in our interest in videogames.

But the industry is the one who must take the big part of the blame. I'm not saying games are less funny or less good or anything compared to before. 25 years ago everyone was playing Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of time or Gran Turismo 2, just like nowadays everyone plays Minecraft or Fortnite, so it's simply the trends having changed over time. However, the popular games nowadays are built much different than before, and that DOES make a difference. Before you could clear the game and unlock things by playing, now we have enormous amounts of DLCs (most of them paying) and season passes and microtransactions and loot boxes. You're not enticed to play the game, you're enticed to spend more money on it in order to remain competitive. And that's not funny.

It's true that as of late games are very costly to develop, hitting six digits with ease, so developers seek to monetize their games to make up for such costs. In contrast, we see games with excellent reviews and even earning prizes having more modest budgets like Kingdom Come Deliverance II or Expedition 33 or even Stardew Valley, with a single developer and working on a not-so-professional desk. This comes to show that such extremely high budgets aren't truly necessary to produce a big game, so if the industry decides to keep producing these games (we'll see for how long will this be sustainable, I doubt if it's actually such right now) they're all to blame for our growing disinterest.

Mechanics are also a fact. 20 years ago games were far simpler and this lack of complications made them accessible and fun to play by everybody. See the many mechanics that have changed in long-running franchises like Mario Kart, Tekken and others. It's not always bad because there's always room for improvement, but sometimes they just complicate things too much and that can deter players that prefer to stick with the older entries, much more accessible. Games resurrected from the shadows also suffer from this, and even remakes do some times. This only prevents players from actually upgrading to newer entries and consoles.

I've been hyped for a few games as of late. One got cancelled for who knows what reason, another was a failure (a 90% discount a couple months after release isn't precisely a nice indicator) and two more were released as Early Access (pay the full price for a working demo that could or could not be developed any further over the years, fantastic). If just a handful of games catch my interest among the 15k that come out in a year and then the result is so insatisfactory... No wonder why our disinterest grows.

I sincerely don't think I'll be upgrading my Switch into any new-gen console, if anything the new console will be brought home by my future kids several years from now. This could perfectly be the end for me and I'll remain forever glued to the classics made on a different time, when games to be played for the fun of it were the trend. Who knows if a surprise can appear out of nowhere (for example, if Pokemon Champions is actually a new entry in the Stadium series and not a new concept almost eclusively adapted for competitive online playing), but the future looks kind of gloomy to me.

Not sure if anybody else also feels like this. I sincerely miss the times when games were made for the fun of it, I know there are still examples out there but they are fewer and fewer as years go by. And while I admit I've gotten older and picky, discarding some classics I used to like because I now see so many flaws in them and not just because of bugs or limitations of that generation, I think I now belong to that group of gamers who still want complete games that last just enough to not be tedious and not overloaded with mechanics so they're accessible for everyone. I'm now part of a small niche that will go unheard by society except for a few intrepid developers.

I personally can't imagine myself getting to a point of disinterest in gaming nothing excites me the same way as setting off on a journey into a fictional world and just getting immersed into it.

Something I didn't see you bring up as much though that I think does really hurt the industry is I think because of the chase of graphics over the years we've gotten to a point where games take ages to develop and I think that does hurt when you have a few franchises your very invested in but they never release a new game except for like once every 5-10 years. Which is something I worry about a lot and people just wanna keep pushing graphics and such where as long as it's not super pixelated I'd much prefer a more anime or cartoony art style over realism not saying that automatically makes it take less time but I feel like the more realistic and higher quality the graphics get the harder they are to make where for example I wish Kingdom Hearts would go back to the PS2 graphics style where we got a game all the time instead of KH3 where it got announced in 2013 didn't release till 2019 and look where we are with KH4 got announced in 2022 I believe and we've not really gotten any news since.
Another point on the graphics thing is yes Pokemon should look better I agree but if they push graphics so far that we get a new Pokemon game once every 4-5 years I think that would suck I rather it not look as good and be fun cause at the end of the day that's what matters.

I also see people complain about how many remakes we get in gaming nowadays and I don't really get that either like I get wanting a new game for sure but if remakes are quicker to produce I don't mind playing classics with a new twist or just looking a lot better I want a Sonic Heroes remake more than anything because a port doesn't seem possible anymore and as much as I love it that game does have some serious flaws even if there are workarounds.

My dad stopped playing games around 4-5 years ago all together and that I won't understand ever but I could see me eventually getting to a point where I spend much more time playing classics than new releases, but I just felt like sharing my thoughts on it.

SonicOlmstead : You're absolutely right, development times are also increasing manifold. This in turn means that a game might have started with popular mechanics that have become obsolete when released, among other things, and that also contributes to their downfall as well as people losing hope in their release (Silksong surprised us at long last, but GTA and Elder Scrolls are still in the hibernation chamber).

About pushing the graphics, while it's true many people want to see a visual upgrade in every entry and we could debate about that, I sincerely doubt the graphics alone delay the game. Engines such as Unreal aren't upgraded that often and in the later generations the graphic capablities of the consoles are relatively similar, so developers are handcuffed here. While the excessively detailed graphics are surely a factor in development delays, I'm sure that redesigning the game (Mindseye, looking at you) or designing a much bigger map or world (because in order to counter the lack of better graphics we offer instead a bigger map/world even if it's empty) play a bigger role, even if graphics aren't pushed hard. Like I said, we could debate how much are players at fault for this, but if after so many failed releases and low-budget successess the industry still follows this pattern they surely have part of the blame for being so stubborn.

I sincerely don't mind the remakes, remasters and all that stuff. The problem is when they mess up, and we don't even need to retort to the disastrous GTA Trilogy produced by Grove Street. In all fields, touching a classic comes with risks because people doesn't like anyone tampering with their "safe temples", we've seen that in music, cinema and so on. And the problem of seeing way too many remakes is the lack of original ideas in our shelves, Pokemon hasn't neglected its core games for releasing remasters but others like Final Fantasy or the mentioned GTA have, and that's where we have a serious problem. When remakes play a major role in delaying a new entry is annoying and people won't be lenient about it because currently the trust with big companies is very low given the failed releases of late. That's why some people complain about remakes, but like always, they don't bother looking into if this delays the main games or what.

I won't stop playing videogames either, but my interest for current generation games is dwindling and dangerously close to zero. I don't mind staying with my classics for as long as I can, maybe technology will give me a helping hand in years to come, but with a stash of games that won't see new additions sooner or later I'll dedicate time to other, less static hobbies and thus lower even more the time I spend gaming.

I'm at a point of disinterest with the main AAA gaming sphere, that much is true, but gaming is far from dead, as is my interest. There's plenty of games to play, more than I could ever play in a lifetime - a nearly infinite backlog of things where I'm bound to find something I enjoy, or even to go back to something I enjoyed and take a whole new perspective on it. Indie games have been wonderful recently, with things like Undertale standing the test of time and Deltarune leaving me on the edge of my seat to find out what happens next.

Of course, there'll be high-budget and well-known flops like Mindseye, Concord, things like that...but those things existed even back in the day. Even in the days of the Atari 2600, there were plenty of disappointments that eroded people's faith in the gaming industry while it was still in its infancy. Nowadays, it's more fun to just sit back, laugh, and enjoy the games that we can enjoy that won't just suck the money out of our pockets and the soul out of our faces.

It helps that like most trends, the most recent ones will eventually die off - battle royale games have mostly been saturated by games like Fortnite, with attempted clones falling by the wayside and flopping miserably, and live service games often suffer the same fate because players can only really commit to one live service game. The same thing happened in the past with the MMO craze, everyone chasing the World of Warcraft money, only to realize that an MMO is incredibly expensive not just to make, but to maintain, and that people will only pay for an MMO that they can practice like a religion and sink their teeth into.

There's a lot of negativity in gaming recently, but I feel like in the future people will look back on all the amazing games we have and talk about how good we had it. The same thing happened back with the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, with many people complaining about the excess of first and third person shooters with brown graphics and tacked-on multiplayer, while those fell by the wayside and people only seem to remember the classics that that generation brought people.

As for me? I'll probably just play whatever I feel like playing. There's ROMhacks and retro games that are calling my name.

Ah, you youngins complaining about video games....

I remember playing some of these most basic games as a kid. My parents had an atari when I was too young to play and we got an NES for Christmas when I was only 5 or 6 I think. Maybe younger. I don't remember.

So, are games "worse"? Definitely. Go back to the NES or SNES and pick one of the top 10 or 20 games on there and you are very likely going to have a good time. A difficult, but good time.

In order to learn new games now many require a tutorial just to get started. If you are doing anything multiplayer and you aren't using the agreed upon tactics then you get bullied out of the game.

It's gotten bad enough for me that outside of minecraft on Vizzed I don't play multiplayer of anything anymore and haven't for a REALLY long time. It's not FUN! I miss the fun. Sitting around a console with 2-4 people playing games and having a blast. It was a group event and it doesn't feel like that anymore. You can play through a headset with someone and that can be fun if you find the right people but for the most part it doesn't happen.

I'll take my single player games with moderately difficult mechanics and enjoy those instead.