I genuinely do not regret jumping off the video game train back in 2015.
Everything I have heard about the evolution of the gaming industry since has surpassed my pessimistic predictions back then, which could be summarized as: video games are becoming predatory and I feel like they eat my time and money for dismissed returns.
It was especially the consol market and the whole online aspect that made me wrinkle my nose. Feels like nowadays you actually can’t buy and play a game offline.
But what do I know. I only tune in when my friend is playing on twitch and we talk about life over Signal. We have gone back to retro games recently too. Jake and Daxter 🎉
i think a lot of people are (me included) because its just force of habit to gravitate towards the AAA games and even tho there are some famous indie games out there like hollow knight those might not be for everyone and we lack maybe the will to search for them? I am probably switching to pc and i wil be searching for more indie games for sure. Maybe some good might come out of this!
I enjoyed watching some playthroughs of a couple of games over the years, but then I sorta lost interest. Used to follow John Wolfe a lot and watch his playthroughs. He was good at finding never heard of indie games in the horror genre, so I witnessed a few gems through him.
Indies are bigger and better than ever. Yeah, the shitty stuff is front and center, but its not hard to find games made with genuine passion either.
Looked at different, we are a in a new golden age of games. Not for giant AAA titles or hardware.
But for the fact that game engines and tutorials on how to use them are readily available, and lots of normal people with neat ideas are making them into real games.
one of the things I like about my thirties is that a bunch of people who grew up interested in and liking the same things I did now have the skills and ability to create things I like
Are they? Most I play are from the 2010s, even if they are still being updated in some cases. What are some good recently released ones.
Some I have put a lot of hours into: KSP, Factorio, Rimworld, Kenshi, Vintage Story. They might be better games than they were back then but it’s still those games. X4 is fun, not sure if that counts as indie, should play it again, apparently it has diplomacy now rather than just shooting people you don’t like.
Fortunately whether you in particular are impressed by a fraction of what one random person happens to like, has no bearing on whether we are in fact getting more good games than ever, nor is the amount of hours you get out of game a metric for quality.
That you like the types of games you can immerse yourself in for those amounts of time is a matter of taste. A game can have a runtime of 15 minutes and still be worth both making and playing.
Let me keep going.
Crying Suns
Lumencraft
Death’s Door
Frostpunk 1/2
Moonlighter 1/2
The Long Dark
Iron Nest
Dead Cells
Slay the Spire 1/2
Project Zomboid (theoretically still not 1.0)
Outer Wilds
Hollow Knight: Silksong (ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE TITLE, and it’s indie)
Ultrakill
Signalis (One of my favorite horror titles of all time, maybe “the” favorite)
Return of the Obra Dinn
Nuclear Option (speaking of games you can sink hundreds of hours into)
CAIRN
Risk of Rain 2
Judas (upcoming)
Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Schedule 1 (another massive title, while I’m personally uninterested)
The point, is that things are going fantastic. Whether one or none of the new games succeeding today are up your alley. That you already found your evergreen timesinks, is great. But it is a fact that more indie titles are getting traction than ever before, and more people are opting out of AAA titles with expiry dates.
That’s the thing. You can keep playing your 2013 titles forever. And more games that work like that are being released, and succeeding, than ever before.
That’s a good thing no matter how you look at it.
There is genuinely so much to play I can’t keep up. I regularly discover stuff from the last several years I had no idea existed, but which is exactly the type of thing I like.
Go look. Tons of these games have absolutely no ad campaigns, and I find a lot of them through word-of-mouth via friends, or the communities of other games I play.
I genuinely do not regret jumping off the video game train back in 2015.
Everything I have heard about the evolution of the gaming industry since has surpassed my pessimistic predictions back then, which could be summarized as: video games are becoming predatory and I feel like they eat my time and money for dismissed returns.
It was especially the consol market and the whole online aspect that made me wrinkle my nose. Feels like nowadays you actually can’t buy and play a game offline.
But what do I know. I only tune in when my friend is playing on twitch and we talk about life over Signal. We have gone back to retro games recently too. Jake and Daxter 🎉
Man, you have been missing out on the golden age of indie games. Sorry to hear that.
How? Factorio, Kenshi and Rimworld are games from before 2015
i think a lot of people are (me included) because its just force of habit to gravitate towards the AAA games and even tho there are some famous indie games out there like hollow knight those might not be for everyone and we lack maybe the will to search for them? I am probably switching to pc and i wil be searching for more indie games for sure. Maybe some good might come out of this!
I enjoyed watching some playthroughs of a couple of games over the years, but then I sorta lost interest. Used to follow John Wolfe a lot and watch his playthroughs. He was good at finding never heard of indie games in the horror genre, so I witnessed a few gems through him.
Plenty of good stuff still happening in games.
Indies are bigger and better than ever. Yeah, the shitty stuff is front and center, but its not hard to find games made with genuine passion either.
Looked at different, we are a in a new golden age of games. Not for giant AAA titles or hardware.
But for the fact that game engines and tutorials on how to use them are readily available, and lots of normal people with neat ideas are making them into real games.
one of the things I like about my thirties is that a bunch of people who grew up interested in and liking the same things I did now have the skills and ability to create things I like
Are they? Most I play are from the 2010s, even if they are still being updated in some cases. What are some good recently released ones.
Some I have put a lot of hours into: KSP, Factorio, Rimworld, Kenshi, Vintage Story. They might be better games than they were back then but it’s still those games. X4 is fun, not sure if that counts as indie, should play it again, apparently it has diplomacy now rather than just shooting people you don’t like.
Windrose is a giant indie success that shat all over Ubisofts attempts at satisfying people wanting a pirate game.
More. Not all meet the technical definition of indie (the studio being 100% self-pulished)
But all of these games are quality projects that have good traction without massive budgets.
I could literally keep going if I went into games that are older or that I haven’t gotten to yet.
My wishlist is getting longer, not shorter. I am finding games I want so much faster than I can play them.
Hmm, skimmed over a few and some of those seem kinda interesting. Not sure if they are the sort of thing to put many 100s or 1000s of hours in though.
Good start.
Fortunately whether you in particular are impressed by a fraction of what one random person happens to like, has no bearing on whether we are in fact getting more good games than ever, nor is the amount of hours you get out of game a metric for quality.
That you like the types of games you can immerse yourself in for those amounts of time is a matter of taste. A game can have a runtime of 15 minutes and still be worth both making and playing.
Let me keep going.
The point, is that things are going fantastic. Whether one or none of the new games succeeding today are up your alley. That you already found your evergreen timesinks, is great. But it is a fact that more indie titles are getting traction than ever before, and more people are opting out of AAA titles with expiry dates.
That’s the thing. You can keep playing your 2013 titles forever. And more games that work like that are being released, and succeeding, than ever before.
That’s a good thing no matter how you look at it.
There is genuinely so much to play I can’t keep up. I regularly discover stuff from the last several years I had no idea existed, but which is exactly the type of thing I like.
Go look. Tons of these games have absolutely no ad campaigns, and I find a lot of them through word-of-mouth via friends, or the communities of other games I play.