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Post by Ex on Jul 12, 2019 14:18:40 GMT -5
Pretty much all the guys I know (early 20s to mid 30s) play video games That bracket falls squarely in line with "millennials", which I believe is the first generation to not stigmatize video games as "kid's toys". I'm glad to read that is the case in your experience. I live in the Deep South. Fishing and hunting are practically religion down here. (I personally do not fish or hunt though.) I also noticed adults would chide gaming like it had the nutritional value of cotton candy. I believe this misconception was derived from limited exposure to the medium. I could understand how if older adults were only familiar with initial simple arcade games (like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong), they might associate video games as being super simplistic entertainment. We here all know that many, many video games require more brain processing power to engage with than television by miles.
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Post by toei on Jul 12, 2019 14:25:46 GMT -5
Ex To get into fishing as a Montrealer, you pretty much need to have a chalet / summer cottage out in the country (they're pretty much the same thing here), or be friends with someone who does. Then it's pretty chill; you get to get away in nature for the weekend, with no stress and nothing to do besides watch your rod and laze around. This used to be common in my parents' generation because land and real estate was super cheap, but now it's become a luxury. Hunting is just not part of the culture, at least not in Montreal. People who live far from the city do hunt.
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Post by Sarge on Jul 12, 2019 14:37:35 GMT -5
Yuuuuup. And I am convinced the Internet, and social media, haven't done much for us as a civilization.
You know, at least I can watch stuff that I actually am interested in now, though. There are quite a few YouTube channels that are worth following.
I grew up in the deep South as well, and yeah, hunting and fishing are very, very prevalent. And hey, if you enjoy it, more power to you! I went hunting and fishing a bit growing up, enough to know that I didn't really care for it a whole lot. My Dad used to hunt more, but even he wasn't super gung-ho about it. He was sharpshooter level in the military, though, so he was good at it when he did.
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Post by Xeogred on Jul 12, 2019 15:58:34 GMT -5
As someone born in 1987, I hate being labeled a millennial. But yes, from my experience my generation and the younger ones seem to have nothing against the medium whatsoever (anime, comics, etc seem more mainstream than ever too now). It was still a very long transition in my lifespan though. Throughout all of the 90's and early 2000's, you were an outcast compared to the "normal" or popular people and most adults I knew via family and friends thought nothing good about the medium, same with the music too. Okay, I get that not everyone is going to love 8bit chiptunes but come on, it always annoyed me how much some adults I knew trashed on VGM like it was some worthless thing with no value or skill. The irony is when you got my grandpa to co-op games with me on the NES, or my dad with myself and some of his buddies to play some bizarre SNES or PC games... they had fun when they gave it a chance. Same deal with some kids I knew in middle school who were preppy jocks at school, then suddenly I go to a party with a bunch of them and everyone's obsessed with Ocarina of Time. Don't want those girls or others to find out do you? ... so silly. I have never once doubted nor been shy about my love for video games and all my hobbies in general. It's ridiculous other people do or people feel the need to judge others for liking what they enjoy.
Nowadays my dad's all about tablets and that junk and my mom is pretty much a FB addict on her phone. Go figure.
I can see some of the pro's and con's with where things have gone though, like others were expressing earlier. In a strange way I almost do kind of miss the days of being that weird nerd not among the normal crowds and gaming was a more isolated, somewhat innocent place. But I still like modern gaming more than most here I'd wager, but yeah it's a lot of give and take with trends and how things have evolved. As a lifelong gamer it's been a pretty wild journey so far living this medium.
I bet people probably thought cars were going to ruin the youth and society at some point back in the day.
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Post by Sarge on Jul 12, 2019 16:06:09 GMT -5
There are less games that appeal to me now, but there are still excellent modern games. I mean, I found a 10/10 just this year, so someone's doing something right. And the retro revival is real; there are absolutely games that follow the old ways and are better for it.
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Post by Ex on Jul 12, 2019 20:55:15 GMT -5
Then it's pretty chill; you get to get away in nature for the weekend, with no stress and nothing to do besides watch your rod and laze around. I do this same thing fairly often, sans fishing. Albeit much more in the fall and winter months; spring and summer down here are abominable. - I honestly think that the '90s were the peak video game design period. A wild west in the best ways. Games were being made for gamers by gamers. The sixth gen began a funneling design shift towards lowest common denominator targeting; the seventh generation took that concept and exploded it into the stratosphere.
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Post by anayo on Jul 12, 2019 21:48:04 GMT -5
Then it's pretty chill; you get to get away in nature for the weekend, with no stress and nothing to do besides watch your rod and laze around. I do this same thing fairly often, sans fishing. Albeit much more in the fall and winter months; spring and summer down here are abominable. - I honestly think that the '90s were the peak video game design period. A wild west in the best ways. Games were being made for gamers by gamers. The sixth gen began a funneling design shift towards lowest common denominator targeting; the seventh generation took that concept and exploded it into the stratosphere. I agree but I also think the game design from each era came about from economic and technological necessity. Nintendo had to market the NES as a toy or else stores wouldn't stock it after the '83 crash. I don't think they did it because they liked toys, they just did it to survive. (They got rid of ROB once the NES gained market traction.) They also had to make games from that era difficult to conceal their brevity. I don't think this was on account of some long lost design purity, it was just technologically impossible to render a huge in-game map like in Crysis. Also, they were harder because people generally had fewer games then. It wasn't like now where you can fill your hard drive up during a steam sale, or download numerous free to play games, or hit up goodwill and buy a Playstation 2 and some games for $40. I remember in the 90's games felt more valuable to me because they weren't as plentiful. I can only imagine the sentiment was even stronger in the 80's, making it more acceptable for a game to ask so much of the one playing it. I think we've even had some recent discussions on how the American version of Ninja Gaiden III had its difficulty cranked up to discourage people from renting it. One could argue they defaced that game out of purely economic motives. Today, games are less challenging and more homogenous. But the cost to develop an AAA game is much higher than it was in the 80's and 90's. I don't design games, but I would think that incentivizes developers to design games that will sell millions rather than thousands. When that much money is at stake the game must appeal to the booger-eating masses who don't care about challenge or game design. Don't get me wrong I definitely prefer the 2D era but to me it seems slightly unfair to imply that both eras share the same conditions.
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Post by Ex on Jul 12, 2019 22:04:07 GMT -5
Don't get me wrong I definitely prefer the 2D era but to me it seems slightly unfair to imply that both eras share the same conditions. I wasn't implying that at all. Not sure how you inferred I implied as such. I inferred there was a transition when I referred to the sixth and seventh generations of gaming as a transitional arc.
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Post by toei on Jul 13, 2019 3:01:23 GMT -5
anayo Let's not forget that Nintendo was a toy company long before they got into video games. In fact, part of the reason the Famicom got so big in Japan is that they already had all the expertise, resources, and contacts necessary to sell toys in the home market, compared to a Sega, which was much more of an arcade company. Even the Game & Watch games were seen purely as toys, internally. So R.O.B. might have been a gimmick invented to get past the backlash that followed the video game crash in the US, but it wasn't a far-fetched solution for Nintendo. Sega marketed to teens because they were an arcade company, and teenagers frequented the arcades. Sony marketed to every one because they were a home electronics company that sold products that appealed to children, teens and adults. Panasonic was, too, and 3DO did everything it could to distance itself from toys in its commercials. I think the other factors you brought up all played into it as well, but part of it was just those companies doing what they knew.
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Post by anayo on Jul 13, 2019 11:58:02 GMT -5
Don't get me wrong I definitely prefer the 2D era but to me it seems slightly unfair to imply that both eras share the same conditions. I wasn't implying that at all. Not sure how you inferred I implied as such. I inferred there was a transition when I referred to the sixth and seventh generations of gaming as a transitional arc. Sorry, I didn't mean that the way it came out. I was just trying to say that while I also prefer pre-2000's game design, I think games were the way they were because of conditions outside of the designers' control, not because they were better at their jobs than current day game designers. So I feel like games being the way they were is sort of a happy accident. Also your point reminds me of how when I played Crysis a few weeks ago, it felt super close to a game from 2019. It feels like that template used to change a lot from one decade to the next. But now it has just kind of stayed the same. That's a good point, especially about older age demographics playing arcades. I remember that while my Dad never wanted to play my NES or Sega Genesis, if we went to an arcade he would play that. I also remember my Mom grumbling that before I was born he wasted a lot of money at arcades. I wonder if that's because the kinds of genres available at arcades such as light gun and race car driving games seemed less juvenile than platformers starring cartoon characters.
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