60 Percent Of Playtime In 2023 Went To 6-Year-Old Or Older Games, New Data Shows
kotaku.com
At first I thought "hey, patient gaming is taking off" when I read this headline, but really, what it's saying is that people are spending most of their time on evergreen live service titles like Fortnite. Ugh.
On the one hand, there is definitely a part of me that thinks it's kinda neat that a f2p game with not super predatory monetization has gotten so much support for so many years. I'm well aware that around Lemmy people think any monetization is bad but tbh fortnite really doesn't do it that bad. It's all cosmetic, you can earn most of the currency by playing and advancing the battle pass. It's not the worst example out there. The game is very accessible and can be totally free if you want it to be
At the same time I have 0 interest in fortnite or any other live service game. I hate that live service games have a tendency to remove old content over time. Give me a live service game that's fun, doesn't have fomo, and isn't predatory with micro transactions.... I guess that's kinda helldivers rn which I am enjoying but we'll see how it shapes up as time goes on.
Overall, it's bleh news because it just reinforces companies continuing down this path of a model that encourages lost media and nickel and diming you for everything...
Live service games have always kinda rubbed me the wrong way, and that's past just the obviously predatory stuff. I like to hop around from game to game to game. But the live service games are all like "what about the daily log in bonuses and weekly challenges?" I can ignore that, but it still bothers me how much they try to badger you into being obligated to play. Give me a regular old single player game any day of the week.
That being said, I suspect that as time goes on, AAA single player games are going to be harder and harder to find. Multiplayer is simply where the money is(and where the players are), and in this stupid "perpetual growth no matter what" economy, that's all the suits will pay money for. Thankfully, we still have indies making great stuff.
Totally agree. Everything else aside, the fomo aspect of these games really irritate me. When destiny 2 completely ripped out their original campaign the game launched with I was baffled. Destiny's moment to moment gameplay is bluntly, really damn good. The gun play feels great. But when you have to dedicate all your time to 1 game to get everything out of it? Nah, not for me. With stuff like halo infinite and helldivers, I do love that the battle pass which are normally timed things, are always available. You never get locked out of anything by not playing on a certain day, or month, or year.
Don't even get me started on the new hitman games and their elusive contracts. That's the stuff that grind my gears. Game is great and fun. But you want to play these special missions we made? Well you better be on and playing during this 1 week, and then they're never there again!
If they want to do this kind of thing they should always least either leave them to be played whenever but offer some kind of double xp or whatever while the event is actually on, or run the event as an annual thing so you can experience it every year and you don't feel like you're missing out because you didn't get the game at release for whatever reason
It's been a while since I played so idk if it's been happening recently, but they have re-run the events a few times over in the past, but I just wish they'd make it a permanent thing. I get the point of it is to make it limited so it's harder to look it up ahead of time, and you can't save during it so you have to do it in one shot. It's a glorified daily run in a rogue like game. Except instead of being randomly generated they actually created whole new scenarios around it with new voice acting and briefs and everything. Let them have their timed event where you have to do it in one shot, and give the people a trophy or something. But make the content available to play whenever you want after that....
Yeah... I largely live under a rock and vastly prefer indie games (and older/abandoned big-name games) to most of the usual AAA games and live-service games.
Which makes it quite funny when I see so many Gamers complaining about how "gaming is dying" due to the enshittification of mainstream games, when I'm quite happy under my rock and sheltered from all that 😅
Also, like, with every game with private servers, the private servers are pretty much universally better than the public ones. Someone close to the server has to care enough to put the thing up, which goes a long way past some company opening a few hundred for money.
I dunno, Folding Ideas broke down Fortnite's monetization policies, and they're pretty damn barbaric, particularly in how they target kids.
My biggest gripe is that fortnite(along with a lot of games that feature battlepasses and rotating stores) preys on FOMO. If they didn't do that, I probably wouldn't mind nearly as much
Fortnite is okay in my book, because while it may not be a game I'll ever play, it subsidizes all the freebies from Epic. I have a library of well over 200 games, most being excellent indies with a few AAA titles, and I've never given Epic a single cent.
As a gamer since early 90s I decided to look through my played games list of at least 256 games, avg year of the game release is 2005, oldest I've played is from 1981 and newest is 2023. By the decades:
About play time... I play mostly pre2020 stuff, mostly minecraft (lol) and playing all the good classic stuff I've missed since 3d era, finished Thief 1/2 recently. I actually trying to find something new I like since I bought decent gpu, but it is hard... I don't care about Fortnite/Overwatch/CS2 (CS 1.x + bots/Source ftw)/AnyGameWithLargeSword. Meme about buying $ XXX gpu just to play Terraria is real.
Currently playing: Yakuza Kiwami, released 2016. Yep.
How much of it just Skyrim?
I am in my mid-30s, and play fortnite semi regularly. Zero-build is just a solid FPS, and the changing load outs keep it fresh. I play pretty much exclusively with friends my age that have moved to other parts of the country and it's a great way to keep in touch with them.
Also they have Guitar Hero (Festival) and arcade racing modes (Rocket Racing)
Currently playing TW3, so yeah. Other games in my library are Terraria, Stardew Valley, the Portal duology, and Minecraft. Only newish game is Hyperbolica.
I play Crystal Caves on my 3080. No regrets.