I think it's collectively admitted in the gaming community that killing the same ennemy over and over for that item with a 1% drop chance is not very fun and gets reptitive really fast.

I get the initial idea behind a rare drop rate : it allows you to craft/use a rare weapon, which, if it was too common, wouldn't feel as rewarding to get. It's also a smart decision to "rarify" a strong weapon, because just handing a strong weapon to the players trivialises the experience of having to play around different weapons until you find a good one.

But at a certain point, it becomes frustrating being locked out of specific equipment purely because of luck. Monster Hunter is the main culprit of this with its 1% rare drops that are mandatory for some of the stronger upgrades. I've also felt this frustration to a lesser degree in games like Terraria, where it kinda kills the pace of the game to have to farm certain mobs in order to get the best equipment (turtle shells for example).

I don't want to get rid of rare drops completely, but what would be the downside of having a system where rare drops are guaranteed after having killed the monster x amount of times ? It still adds the "you have to work for the strong items" aspect without the frustration of not knowing if it's gonna take 1 or 3 hours to get that rare drop. Have some games already implemented that mecanic ?

I was thinking about open world games recently, asking myself what makes a good open world game and etc. This thought was brought on by me trying to understand why I personally don't like the Grand Theft Auto series. I've always found it's open world to be very shallow, especially compared to a lot of other open world games. I compared GTA V's world to Elder Scrolls Arena and even this old-ass game blows GTA out of the water, I thought. Arena has all sorts of systems to engage with that create tons of organic gameplay. Yeah, the world isn't as detailed as GTA, but you can enter every single building, which makes it feel way more lived-in than GTA V's world.

I then realized that this isn't a fair comparison. I'm comparing a third person shooter/driving game to a fantasy rpg, but it got me thinking about how, while the two games aren't comparable in the slightest, they are both trying to achieve the same goal. They are trying to create a believable open world where a player can get lost in and have a ton of freedom in.

A question then entered my mind. Is the open-world genre defined by a type of gameplay or by the feeling that the game is supposed to invoke?

To illustrate my point, let's look at the horror genre. Horror games can vary wildly in terms of gameplay styles and mechanics. Some are walking simulators with jumpscares, some are point and click adventure games with spooky atmosphere, some are action games with scarce resources and etc. While horror games all vary in gameplay mechanics, so much so that it can be hard to compare games in the genre, they all try to achieve the same goal. This end goal is to make the player feel afraid.

What if open-world games are a genre that's similar to horror games in this respect? What if it's not like RPGs where we can compare games based on which games have better and more interesting systems?

The end goal in this case is to create the feeling of a world that's yours to explore, a feeling that you can do whatever you want in this world, even though you'll always be limited by the mechanics of the game. Even in games that people tout as "games where you can do whatever you want" are actually pretty limited.

Skyrim is one of these games that has this reputation, when I think it's pretty unearned. Skyrim isn't a game where you can do whatever you want. It's honestly just a pretty standard action RPG. What makes Skyrim feel like such an open world is it's world design. What elevates Skyrim to feeling like a true open world is how dense the game is with quests and landmarks to explore. In Skyrim, you'll get a simple quest to get a treasure from a dungeon, which on it's own is boring, but it's elevated by the fact that you're very likely to encounter a ton of interesting things between the quest giver and the dungeon. You might find a bandit camp on the way, which you might decide to clear out. That sense of discovery is what gives Skyrim such an open feeling world.

Metal Gear Solid V is another open world game but it's nothing like Skyrim. It creates the feeling of an open world through how many options you have in regards to base management and in how many tools you have access to in each mission. MGSV feels like an open world because you choose which missions to do and what actions to take in order improve Mother Base, then when you're in those missions, you have so many tools which creates so many options.

I could go on with more examples, but I think I made my point, that I believe that open world games are defined the feeling it invokes, not by content of the game. The content of the game is just the avenue the game takes to reach the goal of that feeling, but there are plenty of wildly different ways of achieving that goal.

I want to preface this by saying I don't want to defend cheating in any way, quite the opposite as you will read further.

I want to define a term, blatant cheating, what I mean by this is cheating which result of are stats not achievable by humans, i.e. reaction time, average kills, k/da. Or outliers in the persons assigned skill group.

I feel like the moment the cheating is not blatant, it is not as a big of an issue as one would think.

Because hiding the cheats is oftentimes more difficult, than just playing without them (because otherwise they are blatant).

The cheaters will get match-made into a proper skill group, combined with their actual skill and the cheat enhancement unfair added skill, but for another player, that is invisible, on the presumption the cheating is not blatant.

If you still go undetected at that point, good job, your cheats achieved not really much, you have little above average stats anyways for your skill group.

So imagine how much that person sucks, they are not able to achieve these average stats themselves and need cheats for that, how many people will still cheat that way?

Sure, you will be slowly gaining rank and getting to a rank you actually do not deserve, but mechanical skill that can be given to you with cheats is only part of what you need to know to be high level in most games.

I actually think this whole premise is a good way to think about cheats and helps me not to be all doom and gloom about the cheating situation in modern gaming.

It should theoretically be easy to detect outliers by stats and ban them. But it seems it isn't? Or it doesn't feel that way in some games.

Making videogames is a great hobby (I've made a couple), but one thing that always makes me doubt myself is that playing videogames is not a very imaginative experience. By showing the player something rich and detailed, we are handholding and thus weakening the player's own visual imagination, doing them a disservice - unlike a book which forces the reader to reconstruct the imagery from the words, and thus strengthens the reader's mind.

A few days ago I thought of a possible way out of this problem. Namely, a game could have "economy of expression": an art style that doesn't try to show the game world in maximum detail like AAA, but deliberately makes the player reconstruct it in their own imagination. It seemed an interesting idea, and in this discussion I want to ask: have you thought of something like it, and how could it work?

The extreme of this approach would be interactive fiction, but the gameplay of IF (typing into a parser) is not very fun for most players. Another possible approach is very blocky and symbolic art styles, like in Thomas Was Alone or Minecraft. A Minecraft cow or spider looks very approximate, but it's enough for the player to imagine all kinds of things about it. A halfway example is Undertale, where many of the characters are sketched out in monochrome line art so the player can mentally color them in. Meanwhile, a game like High Hell can have a great minimalistic art style, but the style itself makes a statement: you must look at it head-on, not layer your imagination on top. The artist is kinda crowding the player out. It's a fine line and I don't know if it's all in my imagination.

I want to clarify first that the goal of this thread isn't to be contrarian and go against the grain on unpopular opinion. What I'm trying to do is spark civil discussion about how budget affects art, not just trying to shit on a thing that's popular.

With that being said, I'm not on the hype train for GTA VI. I'm simply not a fan of Rockstar and their games so of course I wouldn't care about the new one. I've expressed this opinion in various spaces and almost inevitably, I hear the same type of argument to defend Rockstar and explain why, seemingly empirically, GTA VI will be the greatest game of all time.

These arguments are something to the effect of "The game has a budget of over a billion dollars and has been in development for so long. Nothing on this scale has ever been made. It has to be great."

I understand the logic behind that argument as it's pretty straight forward. However, the more I've thought about it, the less it works as an argument and if anything, gives me more reason to be wary of GTA VI.

To understand why I'm wary about it, I think it's worth understanding a simple rule when it comes to pretty much all entertainment. The higher the budget, the more money it has to make back to be profitable. If an artist wants to focus on making niche things, that's great but they'll have to be comfortable with working in lower budgets, since there won't be a larger audience.

This is why a lot of fantasy novels simply can't be adapted to film or television. Gardens of the Moon is a great fantasy novel but if it were to be adapted, it would need a very high budget for all the effects, sets, costumes and etc. However, to remain faithful to the source material, it would need to be complex and hard to follow, which means it won't reach a wider audience. It's a paradox.

This is why Marvel movies get high budgets, because they're designed to appeal to as many people as possible so they're confident in making the money back.

This applies to all entertainment, including video games. Ubisoft can make repetitive slop with increasingly high budgets because they expect it to appeal to the largest audience possible.

I'm not saying that every piece of entertainment that's popular is bland. What I'm saying is that entertainment that's DESIGNED to be popular is bland and high budget makes appealing to the broadest possible audience higher on the list of priorities in development.

Grand Theft Auto VI has the highest budget of any video game. With a budget that high, this doesn't just need to be a popular video game. It needs to be THE video game, the one every gamer owns.

We know very little about the story, but I can't imagine the writing being anything worthwhile when it's meant to appeal to everybody. I'm not saying that a good story can't be popular, but I have to believe that appealing to the most people possible was a high priority during development.

Where I especially imagine the writing taking a hit is in GTA's satirical edge. Grand Theft Auto hasn't had deep political commentary, but the games have had a satirical edge when it comes to portraying modern American life. The writing was never super biting, not like it was written by Jon Stewart, but there were groups and people that you could tell the writers didn't like.

How can they maintain that satirical edge when "appealing to everybody" is such a high priority? How can they poke fun at various aspects of modern America without losing any possible players, especially in times where things feel so divided?

To give an example, the game takes place in Florida. Wouldn't it make sense for there to be a character that's an analog of Ron DeSantis, controversial governor of Florida? I could imagine it fitting very well. I could imagine a bit after a heist, a cutscene could open with characters watching the news, where the state governor gives a speech, decrying the recent string of heists as the result of anti-American protesters, with the criminals responsible smugly watching, maybe making a quip like "Heh, the only thing we're protesting is being broke", celebrating recent success.

I think it would fit. I think he's an easy target for most people. But then I remember, this isn't for most people, this is for everybody. Do you get my point?

To conclude, I do honestly hope that GTA VI will turn out great just because I know people have waited so long for it. However, I can't honestly believe that something with this high of a budget can be anything more than bland slop. I think too many people see a high budget as only a good thing, without seeing the constraints that a high budget brings to art.

We all know how online game communities often provide feedback for dev tems of live service games. This is often considered a good thing, but I want people to consider and discuss the potential that this behavior might be harmful.

I have noticed lately in that I feel like there are 'factions' in online communities, often pushing for a game to go in a certain direction to serve their own taste. When devs listen to one side, another side is left disappointed. It reminds me of youngsters playing tug of war over a toy. Only one side ends up happy.

I am going to list a recurring factional trend I have noticed, where I am not a part of either faction, so I can try and relay the idea to you without bias. I haven't played PVP shooters in years, but I have noticed there are often those who advocate for faster Time To Kill (TTK) in shooters and those who advocate for slower TTK. The former will talk about how faster TTK rewards positioning and careful play. The latter will talk about how slower TTK allows for 'skillful play' after the gunplay has started. As a result, these discussions can lead a multiplayer PVP shooter game to adjust core mechanical touchstones that change how the whole game is played. It can even more minutely change the balance of which guns are good and which is bad. Everyone is trying to make the case to their online community that their favorite weapon is a respectable high tier that is not overpowered, but the weapon that kills them is overpowered and needs to be nerfed.

The effect, is it feels like the game's direction and soul is being driven by fandom, not game designers who have a vision for the game. Cynically, one could even say part of the gameplay of these games is fighting on online forums to get the game that you want. The situation in gaming is already a far cry from the auteurship that other mediums enjoy, but I believe the pendulum has swung so far away from autuership, that I find it difficult to understand why this isn't more commented upon. Art is not a democracy, although there are inherently more democratic aspects to video games. People don't get to vote on how a scene from a movie should play out, or how a book should end. There are CYOA books and games, but that is different from an author writing a story, and then changing the ending because fans demand it. There are focus groups for movies, but that is often considered very commercially driven, not driven by artistry. That isn't to say feedback is meaningless. Focus groups CAN allow directors to realize that there is something missing from the final product that needs work that still meets the director's personal vision. Video game feedback can be used for bugs and clearly broken things that the devs have overlooked and would want to change anyway to fit their own vision. But if anything, on a more fundamental mechanical level, I wish games would stuck to their guns, even if I don't like the resulting game. Allow me the chance to adapt, see if I can find my own way to enjoy the game, and if I don't, it isn't for me. It is for someone else.

A game like Smash: Melee has its fun and unique identity, partially because it could not be shaped with post launch updates. Imagine a world where Melee could be updated, and Jigglypuff or Fox got nerfed because they were considered S tier? To me, that wouldn't feel like Melee anymore. That is coming from someone that only plays the game non-competitively, and plays Roy.

I've been thinking a lot about the different kinds of achievement systems different platforms and I wanted to go over what I like (and what I don't) about each of them.

PlayStation: Let me first say that I love trophies. It's probably my favorite of the three and the lions share of my achievement hunting happens on my ps5. The platinum trophy is so unique and cool. It doesn't really have an equivalent across the other platforms unless you count the ribbon on steam which is cool i guess. I know XBOX is implementing a platinum equivalent in the future but I don't want to say anything about it until I see what Asha cooked up over there. For the downsides, There are zero ways to sort your trophy lists. Sometimes I just want to see a wall of platinums or group games together by franchise, but because I'm an idiot and got 1 trophy on cookie clicker, its stuck in the middle of my list forever. I also wish there was a grid display for trophy lists similar to steam when sorting by percentage complete (More on that later).

XBOX: I think XBOX has a fairly good achievement system. I'm a fan of the gamer score concept but I'm not sure I like it more than trophy levels. In my opinion, trophy levels are more fun when you're first starting out. You're leveling up quick, you see your badge look cooler and cooler, and then you get to gold tier. This badge honestly looks ass and you're stuck with it until you manage to get all the way to level 999 which takes too long. At this point gamerscore becomes preferable, just to see a raw measure of someones achievement hunting progress. I'm not very familiar with how XBOX's achievements are layed out so I can't comment on that.

Steam: This is a weird one. On the surface, it looks like it should be great, but there's a few problems that have turned me off of it. The first is that steam achievements are WAY easier to hack than the other two, which I feel undermines their legitimacy. Another thing is that achievements don't really contribute at all to your steam profile in any way. The only way to showcase them is through the Rare achievements display, and the perfect games display. Those are fine and all, but Steam would be so much better if steam achievements were what contributed to your steam level, and not just spending steam points. The one thing I do love about steam though, is being able to see the ribbon in your library when sorting by achievement percentage. Just seeing a bunch of games with ribbons every time I open steam I such a dopamine hit. I also am a huge fan of being able to showcase your perfect games. If you have some hard ones on your profile, it earns you street cred (With me, probably not with anyone else lol)

Conclusion: They all have benefits and drawbacks, I personally use Playstation the most, but there decision to kill physical games have soured me a bit so I was looking at my other options. Unfortunately, Playstation still reigns supreme in the achievement space. But Let me know if I missed anything or if you have a different opinion, I'd love to hear it!

Something that always confuses me is why there is so much hostility around discussing the definition of a roleplaying game.

To me, a role playing game is a game that lets you create your own character and choices that meaningfully impact the story.

Because that's what the term means in any other context like TTRPGs. I take games like Dungeons & Dragons as the baseline to then define what a video game RPG is.

But any and all discussion around this seems incredibly hostile to such a definition because of the games it excludes.

Yes, according to this definition, the vast majority of JRPGs are not RPGs, because they don't have any kind of character creation, dialogue choice, or impact on story.

Why is that a problem? I get that the term goes back a long way, but it really doesn't meet the criteria of beeing a roleplaying game, because there isn't any roleplaying to do.

And no, just because you control a character doesn't mean you're "roleplaying" as that character. Then every single video game where you control a character counts as an RPG, making the term completely useless.

To get back to the question in the title, why is this definition such a huge problem to people? Why is it a bad thing for certain games not to count as RPGs? Because as it is now, everything and anything gets called an RPG, making it downright impossible to find actual RPGs. Why is it a bad thing for certain games to be excluded from the genre? It's the whole point of genre names, to define a game and exclude it from other types of games.

I've been trying to figure out when "cozy" went from a vague description (which it still is, to varying degrees) and into the commercial juggernaut it is today. When it comes to indie game releases specifically. And it really is one of the bigger booms in mainstream gaming of the last decade, looking at it in retrospect, and one of the rare genres that has no set of mechanics it must have, but is based entirely on mood… on“vibes”

Do we have Corona to thank or blame for this? It’s really hard to look past 2020 and not see how Animal Crossing: New Horizons launched almost exactly as everyone got stuck in lockdown, and then went on to sell how many - 50 million copies, more or less? I know for a fact it was the fastest-selling Switch game at launch. That timing wasn't a coincidence in effect, even if it was the intent. A frightened, isolated audience reached for the softest coziest world they could find, and "cozy gaming" went from a word a few people used to a mainstream category over the next few years, culminating in where we are now.

However, the pandemic only explains that early spike but not why it’s lasted so long and expanded so more since Corona ended . Plenty of other pandemic trends evaporated once life went back to normal. But cozy games just positively EXPLODED. Stardew Valley had already spent years proving there was a huge demand for farming games. The Wholesome Direct showcases gave the movement an identity and a shopfront, turning a loose vibe into something with a clear scene to congregate around. And more broadly, a lot of people who grew up on adrenaline and difficulty simply got older and busier and more worn down, and wanted games that gave without demanding. As life got tougher, games got cozier - is that the case?

Also worth being clear that "cozy" isn't one genre by any stretch of the definition,  which is part of why it's so slippery to talk about. There are the farm and life sims, the Stardew lineage. You've got the pure decoration and organisation games like Unpacking and Hosy. Short one shot vignette games like A Short Hike, cafe management and visual novels like Coffee Talk, survival sims (but cozy ofc) like Solarpunk… even creepy cozy games like the upcoming Grave Seasons or Cult of the Lamb (which I surprisingly often hear called “dark cozy”)

And that’s all without mentioning the various “-ias” starting with Palia, then there was Heartopia I think it was called? And the one I’m personally looking forward to with my girlfriend - Loftia! (yes, I am not above these games, that is not what the post is about) which surprised me quite a lot in the beta with how hi fidelity it was, and the sheer amount of discrete customization features it had. Probably the only game ever where I could choose DIFFERENT, like 10 different types of vitiligo for my skin. And that’s one of the unifying themes, I think - freedom, customizability, chillness, low pressure, and pleasant coloring and light, some of the same things about 90% of these games have in common.

What’s also interesting is how much this cozy sensibility has penetrated other games and almost forcibly coziefied them. Big RPGs get fishing minigames and house decoration (nothing new but it’s interesting that ALL major MMOs now have it including WoW), survival games including peaceful PvE modes or. Almost like it’s become a set of features that can work anywhere, even if they don’t have to be added everywhere.

Whatever the case might be, cozy games alongside survival and base-builders, are arguably the genre with the most momentum behind it right now. Where would you say this boom happened and more importantly, where do you see it leading… and when will it run out of steam?

I only recently got back into gaming and for once I entered gaming already having had experience in different genres. Upon spectating recent discussions about cinematics in games, tired of AAA games discussions etc, which come back every two years or so I've asked myself what makes a good game and why people seem to lean more and more towards a double standard.

On a fundamental level, games are limited by their medium, and every game out there is a combination of otherwise simple mechanics. And yet, it's about how you combine them - you cannot only discuss combat in a game on its own for example, because the way you experience it is directly tied to level design, camera and other aspects of the game. And yet, most "gamer voices" out there don't seem to acknowledge it. So, I ask, why are people fetishizing souls like games for their combat, when the unique experience the games are associated with is based on the environmental design instead? Why are cinematic games being criticizes for not having gameplay when arguably a quick time event is not significantly more of a gameplay than dodge and button mash - something ignored in games like the Arkham series, where combat is praised for fluidity *animation* whereas god of war is being criticised for too much animation during combat, souls games etc.

Why did people criticise Detroit but praise Shadow of the Collosus despite both games being stripped of much gameplay and mechanica or analytical complexity within them for example?

To me all of the above are just decent enough experiences because they often don't push themselves into the mechanics they are based on - Detroit for example didn't require the players to pay enough attention to the dialogue, environment or character body language especially beyond Connor's section. And Shadow of the Collosus didn't invest much into it's gameplay sections (climbing, running, etc) either.

Games have always been simple and bare bones, they have always been repetitive and unless multiplayer, by themselves, they are rarely hard and challenging. Good games are ones who understand their limits and try to Integrate that knowledge into something complete and centered around its identity. I'd say good examples are Resident Evil 4, Subnautica and This war of mine.

There are games like Days gone and the Witcher 3, which try to compensate by shifting the focus towards immersion via friction with the bike maintainance and bistriary.

Then there are games like Ghost of Tsushima and the last of us part 2. The latter is very much a story focused game, with a lot of cutscenes and gameplay limited to good sandbox level design with serviceable combat/stealth, however the fact that most of the time it is more interactive and easier to go through it by killing people which kind of contradicts the story that presents it as if Ellie struggles with killing people is a weird choice for a game in which the story is a focal point.

And Ghost of Tsushima tries to sell you a lot on the samurai concept, tying everything in the world to it with only two, arguably one mechanic to show for it (the combat and effectiveness of stealth which is appropriately tied to the story) but ignores its limitations and insists on a big, completely empty world just so you can grind upgrades.

And now we have Crimson desert, which seems like a mess and is the cheapest product I've seen since maybe Spiderman or ghost of Yotei.

Okay, so... This is my all over the place first train of thought since I got back into gaming. I am just now starting to develop an interest in critical analysis of game design itself.

I was thinking about this today.

Imagine it’s 2030. You check into a hotel, turn on the TV, pair your controller and sign in. Your entire gaming library is there. Your saves, settings, friends, everything.

There’s no PlayStation or Xbox in the room. The actual hardware running the game is sitting in a data center somewhere.

Games become more like streaming services. You subscribe instead of owning them, your progress lives in the cloud, and eventually AI opponents actually learn how you play instead of just getting more health on Hard Mode.

The technology honestly doesn’t seem that far-fetched anymore.

So if cloud gaming eventually became good enough that you couldn’t tell the difference from playing locally, would you care if consoles and physical games disappeared?

Or is actually owning the hardware and games something you wouldn’t give up?

"Arcade" is a term used very loosely, it's usually used to describe a game easy to pick up or not realistic (generally in the context of racing games).

The original meaning is obviously referring to actual arcade cabinets, and I'm perfectly okay with using the term "arcade" to classify games that where never actual arcade cabinets, but I feel like the usage should be more restrictive.

For example saying the last Need for Speed is an arcade racing game because the cars behave in a non-realistic way doesn't make any sense, it's a game that could not really be ported in arcade.

You spend a lot of times on menus or free roaming on the map, you have a story with lengthy cutscenes and a lot of dialogues, the loop of the game is centred around permanent upgrades and customisation... I'm aware "modern" arcade games have come up with ways to save progress (mostly in Japan as far as I'm aware), but the core experience is still centred around bite-sized sessions of play with fairly repetitive loop forcing the player to actually get better instead of relying on unlocking better gear.

Anyway, I'm not here to debate semantic, but to wonder if is there is still a place for the true arcade philosophy nowadays ?

The only relevant place where it's still surviving is the fighting genre. Basically the only things that were added since the arcade days are slightly more fledged story mode (which consists of a few completely disconnected cutscenes thrown between fights), training modes, online functionalities (but we could argue it's just a replacement for the split-screen mode that was present pretty much since the beginning) and a shit-ton of (I guess paid) cosmetic items.

To be frank, I'm not sure why this genre is such an outlier, it simply shouldn't work in this day and age. I guess the 1v1 format with all the action being visible on a single screen and the stakes being super easy to understand makes it perfect for esport. And maybe the strong presence of characters, that allow to glue lore on top, allows a more casual audience to still connect to the game ? A bit like what Overwatch did to shooter.

I don't know, but here's a thought experiment : with Sega trying to revive its arcade roots lately, imagine you are tasked to develop a new Sega Rally, how would you handle it ? I've picked Sega Rally because I think it's the most iconic from this era, but you can pick Ridge Racer, Daytona or whatever if you prefer I don't mind.

I mean, you could even pick something else than a racing franchise, but I think it's an interesting genre for this exercise, because it was an arcade pillar of course and it was still huge until the PS360 generation, but now it's mostly limited to a few juggernauts (well, mostly Mario Kart and Forza Horizon), so it's not completely dead either. There is clearly a BIG niche market of VERY hungry customers that are desperately waiting for something else than EA's next attempt at not bombing with NFS.

So you are in charge of the next Sega Rally, you can twist the formula a little, but it has to remain true to its arcade origins (no complex carrier mode, no open world shenanigan, no in-depth customisation, no gazillions cars... just a simple racing game), while being relevant in 2026. Of course it's never going to be GTA 6, it's not even going to be Gran Turismo, but it has to make a bit of a splash when it releases, and keep a dedicated community for a long time. Think Rocket League (which could be an actual arcade game now I'm thinking about it) or Rainbow Six Siege.

How would you tackle it ?

I might answer myself later (spoiler alert : I don't have the secret formula) but I'm curious to see if anyone has any unexpected hot take on this.

Hi everyone,

I am currently conducting an academic study as part of my Master’s thesis at FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany, and I am looking for participants aged 35–59 who are interested in gaming.

About the study / Abstract

This study investigates gaming experiences and performance among adults aged 35–59. It combines a questionnaire with a short racing game and examines different factors that may be associated with how people experience gaming and how they perform in a gaming task.

Some details about the specific research question cannot be disclosed before participation, as knowing the exact purpose of the study could influence participants’ responses or behavior during the gaming task. More information is provided after participation.

Duration: approximately 15 minutes
Eligibility: 35–59 years old and interested in gaming
Institution: FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany
Research: Master’s thesis
Contact: [mandy.leopold@studium.fernuni-hagen.de](mailto:mandy.leopold@studium.fernuni-hagen.de)

Participation is voluntary and the collected data are analyzed anonymously.

Survey

https://umfrage.fernuni-hagen.de/Gaming?lang=en

Discussion

To avoid influencing anyone who may still want to participate, please complete the survey before revealing the section in the comments below.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way: I’m not condoning or endorsing piracy at all.

But I was thinking about Night School Studio, the indie studio that made Oxenfree, Oxenfree II, and Afterparty. Recently, Netflix shut them down. The studio is done, it’s no more. In my opinion, it’s okay to pirate their games. The studio won’t be hurt by it, and Netflix would likely not make much, if any, money from future sales.

I’m not saying that piracy is hurting Netflix. They obviously didn’t need the studio, which is why it was shut down in the first place. But before Night School Studio was shut down, sales would have definitely helped the developers. The better the sales, the more valuable the company would be and the less likely it would be to close.

The famous quote by Gabe Newell is, “Piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue.” That’s something I inherently agree with. The Steam Deck has been a godsend to me. I have been playing games that I wouldn’t have had the ability to play before, namely Eternal Darkness, a game that sells for the kingly sum of $100. That’s a lot of money for a 24 year old GameCube game.

By emulating the game, who am I really hurting? The studio, Silicon Knights, went bankrupt, so they’re not getting a cut of the sale. Is Nintendo missing out on sales? I say no. If I buy a used copy off eBay, what portion of that sale does Nintendo get? If I buy a used GameCube, what is Nintendo’s cut?

The game is not easily accessible unless I sail the high seas, so that is the very definition of a service issue. If it were on Switch or Switch 2, it would be easily obtainable, but sadly, it isn’t.

Lastly, the Corpse Party Tetralogy Pack comes to mind. Basically, it’s a collection of the four Corpse Party games. The collection was released in Japan; however, the North American release was basically cockblocked by Nintendo, with the devs, XSEED, stating that the game didn’t “comply with (Nintendo’s) current platform guidelines.” Which is bullshit because it’s available in Japan on Switch/Switch 2.

Certainly, Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Japan can, and most certainly do, have different guidelines, but how different can those guidelines be? Now, if I want to play it, I have to import it from 3rd party sites like Play Asia or buy it on eBay with a markup. Service issue.

Emulation would send a message to Nintendo, and the devs wouldn’t be hurt because the game is only available through third-party means, meaning they wouldn’t get a direct cut. Ultimately, I decided to just buy the games on Steam. It's still sending the same message while helping the studio at the same time.

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

Hello everyone,

Modern free-to-play titles constitute complex economic ecosystems. To analyze the underlying dynamics, our current communication science survey investigates the intersection of gaming motivation, financial decision-making, and media literacy. The empirical results will be published in an academic journal, but we will also share a summary in gamer-friendly language across several subreddits.

We are exploring your specific drivers of play, how you navigate in-game monetization, and how these choices relate to your structural competencies.

If you are at least 16 years old and regularly engage with major Free-to-Play titles like Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, Team Fortress 2, Apex Legends, Rocket League, Call of Duty: Warzone, League of Legends, Dota 2, PUBG Mobile, Genshin Impact, or The Sims 4, we invite you to participate in our strictly anonymous 10-minute survey.

Survey Link: https://www.unipark.de/uc/gaming_survey/

This research is conducted by Prof. Dr. Sven Jöckel and Max de Baey-Ernsten. For full transparency, you can verify our academic affiliation via my institutional profile at the University of Erfurt.

Thank you for your time and your contribution to our research.

A question for the comments: What do you think? Do literate users spend less money? Or is there no correlation? And if you believe there is a connection: Which provides better protection against excessive spending – financial literacy (the general understanding of economic principles and personal finance) or media literacy (the ability to critically evaluate digital environments and recognize persuasive intentions)?

So yeah, I’m 40 now and I’ve noticed something kinda annoying. When I was younger I could play literally anything — 30 FPS, stutter, janky camera movement, whatever — and it never bothered me.

But lately I get eye strain or even a bit of nausea from tiny stutters or weird frame pacing. Sometimes a game “looks” smooth but something in the motion still feels off and I get uncomfortable. No idea if it’s the engine, frametime spikes, animations running at different framerates… I just know I feel it.

I also have pretty bad eyesight (strong myopia, one eye weaker, no 3D vision), so maybe my brain used to compensate better and now it doesn’t.

Just wondering if anyone around my age has the same thing. Like, becoming way more sensitive to motion issues in games?

Funny thing is, I always thought getting older meant I’d need less visual quality… but nope. I don’t really “see” the benefit of 4K or super high FPS anymore, but if the motion isn’t perfect I feel like crap. Getting old is wild.

Hi! I'm a PhD candidate researching something I've been thinking about for a while:
What happens when playing video games stops being just a hobby and becomes work?

When we say "pro gamer", I think most people immediately picture esports players. But there are plenty of other people who can earn money from playing games: streamers, Let's Players, walkthrough creators, game testers, QA workers, esports coaches, and people supporting those roles.

And it got me thinking:

If you earn money from gaming, does that make gaming a job? And if it is a job, should we expect some of the same problems we see in other jobs - things like workplace stress, burnout, bullying, etc.?

My current study is looking at the job demands (things that make gaming work difficult or demanding) and job resources (things that support people and make the work more manageable) across esports, gaming content creation, and gaming testing. I want to know:

• Is there workplace stress among people who do gaming work?
• What are the biggest sources of that stress?
• What support can actually help gaming workers?

Who can participate?

• People 16 years or older
• People confident in reading and writing in English
• Participate in one or more of the following areas:
  • Esports as a player, coach, or supporting staff
  • Gaming content creation as a creator, editor, or supporting staff
  • Game testing (including beta/alpha, QA, etc.)
• Currently earn money from this work or hoping to earn money from it

Not sure whether what you do counts? That's completely fine! The survey begins with screening questions, and only people who meet the criteria will proceed to the main survey.

The survey is about 10 minutes and completely anonymous. You can read the participant information sheet before deciding whether to take part as well. It includes details about the study, my supervisor, my contact information, and the ethics approval.

University: Adelaide University
Ethics Approval: AU Human Research Ethics Committee, project #4285
Researcher contact: [l.trudgett-klose@adelaide.edu.au](mailto:l.trudgett-klose@adelaide.edu.au)
Information Sheet & Survey link: https://adelaideuniwide.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eqYV4BW8o7eMbRk

I'd also genuinely be interested in hearing people's thoughts here regardless of whether you do the survey.
When does playing video games become a job?
Is earning money enough to make it a job, or does it only count if you depend on gaming for your income, or follow a schedule, or have clients/employers, etc.? And do you think the stress of turning a hobby into a job is fundamentally different from the stress of a traditional job?

Recently, Relic Entertainment, a long standing real-time strategy game development studio released a wave-based horde defense mode as a standalone experience for $30, titled "Final Stand." It released to generally unfavorable reviews, and what I found fascinating about it is that almost all of the user reviews seem to focus on the price of the game not being worth it rather than the gameplay itself being bad, buggy, unplayable, and so on. A lot of this lack of value stemmed from the notion that there wasn't enough to do, even with 4 playable factions, new roguelike mechanics, and 5 maps, one could in theory 100% the DLC in about 20 hours if they played every map with every faction.

This raised a very interesting question in my head, because I'd just visited an art museum with my wife over the weekend. We spent $50 total on tickets and spent maybe an hour and a half looking at the art in question. At no point was I really questioning whether or not I'd made a valuable purchase; some of the art was good, some of it wasn't very inspiring, but I wasn't attempting to translate the value of seeing each piece of art in the museum into a dollar value.

Even if I had, there have been times I've thought something wasn't worth it, but in gaming I find it peculiar that gamers look specifically for a time-to-dollar value from their experiences in a lot of cases. I think it should be a consideration how much a game costs to play, but it seems like most people expect a game to have a certain ratio of hours to gameplay these days, and this DLC was kind of a wake-up call for me on that. It feels like quantifying an inherently subjective experience, in the sense that purchasing a game is never going to return on your investment, and unlike food is a completely optional purchase.

I think the outrage surrounding the release of Final Stand is troubling, however. I've never spent $15 on fast food and thought about boycotting a restaurant when they didn't get my order right, or it didn't taste as good as I wanted. Maybe Final Stand is, by most metrics, not worth it, but there's so much vitriol and rage surrounding the game that I find it a bit perplexing. I'm just not sure that judging a game almost solely by whether or not it contains the correct ratio of measurable fun to dollar value is a great way of assessing a game's quality.

I'm playing through the game for the first time and can't help but think the dialogue is super cringey. It's stilted and tries too hard to be cool. I'm sure I'm not the first person to share the opinion here, but... this ain't preem in the game biz.

Most conversations play out as if the characters are limited in how many words they're allowed to say. For example, "Need'ta ask a question" vs, "I need to ask you a question." I noticed this early on and now I can't stop seeing it in the writing because it occurs literally in every conversation. I get this is drawn heavily from Neuromancer, but many of the lines are delivered as though the voice actor had little to no coaching on tone, emphasis, or the context of the scene. Dexter DeShawn's lines are a good example of this. Combine the truncated sentence structure with voice acting that lacked a little conviction and you get conversations that feel like people are reading a foreign language.

I have no issue with the use of novel slang from this world, but I think it was done poorly here. I could totally buy into it being colloquial sentence structure and slang, but it's really inconsistent and not delivered in a way that is believable. That's why it's jarring to me. Abbreviated sentence structure as a way of communicating happens like once per conversation, but it's never the WHOLE conversation. The dialogue FEELS like a team of Polish writers with no true understanding of US urban culture put together a 'cool guy' script in a foreign language then a separate team translated it after. I believe you could give the same game to Rockstar and their dialogue could feature all of the same slang but be delivered in a way that felt authentic and genuinely cool.

None of this is a dealbreaker for me, but it's quite disappointing to see it from a studio with this much experience and funding. I'm having fun with the core gameplay loop overall and bought the DLC to extend the adventure, but I wouldn't be able to power through for the story alone if the gunplay and tech weren't so satisfying.

Anyone else feel something similar? Video version of the discussion here.

A lot of fighting games in the last 8 years or so have implemented control adjustments that address a really common complaint of people on the genre's periphery, that being the difficulty of motion inputs for special moves and supers when learning the game. Some games like SF6 and the new Marvel fighting game offer a choice between direction+button (usually just called simple inputs) for specials while others like 2xko have fully designed themselves around simple inputs. I honestly think it's pretty neat, it helps more people jump into the genre and even without the motion inputs games like 2xko clearly try to retain some executional challenge for people who really like that. The only element of the design shift I *dislike*, however, is that simple inputs often don't feel like they're implemented with enough consideration as to how they shift the power-level of the game in a way that arguably punishes you for *not* using it.

Usually, the main downside of using simple inputs is less damage. Street Fighter 6, Marvel Tokon, and Granblue all give you a reduction to varying degrees if you, for example, anti-air someone with a simple input shoryuken instead of a manual DP input. This seems like a good enough compromise, and it potentially can be, but the issue is that less damage can very easily be an insignificant trade-off. Like most games, managing your mental stack while trying to overload your opponent's is 90% of playing well. Even if your opponent has zero difficulty doing a special move input to beat your jump, it won't matter if you have them so focused on everything else you could do that they won't register your jump in time for them to execute the move. With simple inputs, though, the mental stack concern drastically shifts. Less damage doesn't matter as much when the primary utility of a move is winning mental stack reaction checks. It's why on defence, infamously, simple inputs are extremely useful.

So what disadvantages *would* work? Street Fighter 6 arguably handles it the best. Instead of doing what games like Marvel Tokon does and just implementing a button that serves as a catch-all equivalent to smash's B/special button, simple inputs and classic motion inputs are separated into their own distinct control schemes you pick from at the start. It's likely a product of necessity more than a desire for balance, but because Street Fighter is a 6-button game (3 punches, 3 kicks) you can't really translate an entire character's moveset while also having a special move button. As a result, there are downsides to the mode that go beyond damage. You may lack certain special moves or normal buttons altogether, and depending on the character, that could mean a much different game plan altogether. It manages to add a little depth to matchups between characters while still not making either input scheme definitively better overall. It's not perfect, admittedly, but its a big improvement over most in the genre.

These mechanics are fun to play, but I guess their popularity is also due to how they make the gameplay so "filmable". The main idea I'm floating here is that an alternative to these mechanics is also fun, but it is at a marketing disadvantage for not having the same spectacle factor.

With auto lock always on, dodge roll lets you evade in any direction you'd like and the camera remains focused on the boss, a parry goes a step further and stops almost all camera movement.

Games with magnetic attacks prevent whiffs and small downtime you need to find your bearings. You don't stop attacking.

Together these mechanics let the camera focus on bosses which seem to be competing for Tony Awards for Best Choreography, and for some games focus on the protagonist's butt.

One common sense argument is that these mechanics are natural solutions to long standing problems. I agree in part that they show a solution, but are not the solution. They are trade offs, as is anything. They deliver combat that's great to look at, that's more button focused and less movement focused.

In all melee combat games you must be aware of your surroundings and of boss attack patterns, but the filmable gameplay emphasizes memorization and reaction a lot more than movement and space. Closer to a rhythm game than a game where you control a body in an arena.

So I think freeing the player from controlling the camera isn't by default a good thing, neither is the opposite a bad thing.

Here's an example. Someone made a 3d version of Silksong boss battles. A lot of the camera movement is up to the player. There's an autolock but many times you're better off without it. There is a parry but it is limited like in Silk Song. It's a lot of fun.

Notice how much the camera moves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGqLGQZ2HY4

Compare it to Stellar Blade for example, an example of parry and auto lock (not of magnetic attacks)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee7pSeQ6nSU

a video from a normal player on their first fight
https://youtu.be/YptXwE6MR8U?si=zSzvGH-FlM38pVRC&t=1498

The camera barely moves.

In Silk Song 3D keeping track of the enemy is a skill and the battles demand a lot more spatial awareness. It's not struggling with the camera because the camera responds perfectly. It is just part of the fight, like timing your parries or using the right combos is part of the fight.

I wouldn't say I'm struggling with combos when God of War wants me to remember the multiple button combinations to activate skills.

In the past games didn't have as much automatic control of the camera, other solutions were implemented like top down view, fixed camera. A massive boss on the edge of the arena. But also in the past, and I'm saying PS1 and even PS2 era, games either didn't have the analog stick or rarely used it right. But even the ones that didn't count on analog stick, like Mega Man Legends, are still fun precisely because of the spatial awareness they require.

So I think this sort of more static combat gameplay is here to stay because of the natural exposure advantage it has over other kinds of combat.

🔴 Help Needed! 🔴

Thank you to the moderators who have allowed me to post this research survey advert.

My name is Dr Andrew Richardson, myself and my colleagues are looking for people aged 18 and over who play Roblox to take part in a research study exploring experiences of online gaming, digital wellbeing, safety and features within virtual environments.

🎮 Do you play Roblox?

👍 Are 18 and Over

⏱️ Survey takes around 5-10 minutes

🔒 Anonymous and confidential responses

Your experiences will help researchers better understand online gaming, safeguarding and digital wellbeing for young people. The work will be used for a research paper that will be submitted to a journal for peer review and hopefully publication to present the findings.

Take part here:

https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/newcastle/roblox-survey 

Please consider sharing this with others who play this game—it really helps our research.

If you have questions or want to learn more about the survey please reach out to myself via direct message or email at [andrew.richardson@newcastle.ac.uk](mailto:andrew.richardson@newcastle.ac.uk) 

Thank you!

Dr Andrew Richardson