I know what you mean, video games feel like junk food instead of well prepared meals we used to have in the past. I've taken a long break from videogames and lately I've been playing old games I didn't get the chance to play when they first came out.

>>21329 I usually play games I like and dont follow news so closely, it helps that most AAA shit that makes new is garbage so I wont bother with it.

I just play video games I enjoy, which tends to be mostly older games and the odd indie title. There's a lot more out there than whatever fotm slop is being peddled by big corpos. I also don't pay for video games. It's a lot more enjoyable when there isn't a financial burden associated with the hobby.

>>21329 I mostly just play retro and sometimes buy newer games during sales (most of them end up sucking.) I’ve mostly checked out of modern gaming. I’m not their target audience anymore. Don’t know how so many consoomers are hyped about the Switch 2, the game card system alone is already pure cancer. The system itself looks incredibly boring. I guess retards really want to pay over $500 to play more Mario Kart.

>>21329 The trick is to play games that don't suck 98% of modern releases are trash especially AAA So go play some hidden gem You might have to look harder but they're still out there. Some examples: Undertail Brigador Noita Rain world High fleet Most games made before 2004ish also fit this bill. Playing something like modded Original X-com will give you a better experience than nu-com chimera squad, for example. Also, almost any game with a remake, the original is better (usually*). Same with spiritual successors. Sometimes the original is better (e g. Most "boomer shooters"), sometimes there is merit to the new one (Beyond All Reason vs Total Annihilation, for example. I dearly love both). Another thing would be to lower your expectations. I know this feels like bad advice and is hard, but it can help you enjoy games you otherwise wouldn't. I'm not asking you to play ubislop, or fifa cod whatever, just something like, armored core VI, ace combat 7, MechWarrior 5, everspace 2, songs of conquest, etc are all good games. Good solid games that stand on their own. The "problem" being that for someone like me, I've played earlier MechWarrior, armored core, ace combat games, that are all better. Like is ace combat 7 better than 4,5, and 0? No, not really. But I can still enjoy it. Try to be happy that somebody is even making something and didn't completely ruin it. Songs of Conquest is great, but HoMM3 is better. Stars in Shadow is truly wonderful, but can anything really surpass Master of Orion 2? Maybe not. Everspace 2 was probably a GOTY contender for me a couple years back. But it's not as good as Freespace 2. But it's unfair to compare vs things 20+ years ago, which is what I'm saying. Sometimes you have to let go a little bit and enjoy things anyway. I'm not saying to smash your head against a brick wall to drop 50 IQ so you can enjoy Fortnite, just maybe give Hyper Light Drifter a chance, maybe give Furi a chance, maybe give CrossCode a chance (I swear, there's a really really mechanically incredible game under there if you can get past the art style). I'm one of the most jaded people and I can still feel pretty good replaying Super Metroid or SotN. Maybe try a randomizer. Maybe try some romhacks. No one says you have to pay $60,$70,$80 for some new game. Sometimes you want to jump in on the ground floor of multiplayer games because of fomo, I can sort of understand that like with an MMO expansion launch or something along the lines of path of exile 2's hyped up early access. I try to think to myself, "will my friends even be playing this in a couple months?" Maybe I'm the sour puss but I'm glad I didn't buy Helldivers 2 when everyone was playing it, because they've all quit now. I didn't mis out on much, you know? There's also a lot of free slop out there. Warframe, first descendant, league, dota, sc2, wow private servers, whatever. I suggest not playing any of it, not feeling pressure to play any of it, and just enjoy what you enjoy Tldr, modern gaming is not really fun, go play more shit like katamari damacy.

>>21329 Voting with your wallet is a meme. Voting with your wallet is the same as someone saying "Shut up and take it, don't complain about us ruining shit, ever." Voting with your wallet is the same as someone saying to you "Just build your own internet". The wallet vote is based on the power of major corporations to manipulate as many people as possible into spending. It's you vs the people who own everything top-to-bottom from the development studio to the publisher to the journalist who makes a review on the game, and they want to pretend this is a real vote. Oblivion is a great case study on "Vote with your wallet" because it's patient zero in the MTX epidemic with its horse armor. Every gacha game and lootbox crate extending into the NFT and season pass era can trace its lineage directly back to Oblivion and its golden-clad horse nobody could see because it's a single player game. The people who bought that are the same as the people who say "Vote with your wallet".

>>21329 >Videogames are just too big to fail Concord and the movie industry disagree: The industry can fail, and the fact their only real success as of late is rehashing 20 year old games is proof that we're in free fall right now because people HAVE voted with their wallets and they've voted every time to go back to what we had before games turned to shit. That's a massive whitepill, don't look at the fact that Oblivion is a 5 Euro 20 year old game, look at the fact that everyone is unhappy with the industry in its current state and is demanding we get more games like Oblivion.

>>21787 Issue with voting with your wallet is that you can only not buy a game once while some whale can buy it ten times

It does feel odd and it makes me wonder if I’m simply growing old. The PS5 is generally uninteresting to me, and Nintendo is doubling down on their service game shit for the Switch 2. It’s likely going to be the first time I skip a game generation. Aside from some light coomlecting, Everdrives for the old consoles and custom firmware for newer ones has been the route for me. Perhaps it’s a good time for anyone to finally get to that backlog they think about. /blogpost

>>21329 Just pirate to try a game first then buy if you enjoyed it, moreso if they're indies. No buyer remorse and you can't fall for FOMO tricks

Pretty evident OP has too much free time to keep up with the videogame news media circle. People with limited free time will only play stuff they like and not following up trends

>>21329 >How do you stay passionate about videogames? You don't. You accept the you-know-whos ripped games out of your hands and ruined them at least 15 years ago. You only occasionally watch shit on jewtube in a desperate attempt at nostalgia farming from a bygone era.

>>21329 Piracy and emulation solve this for new and olds games on the consumer side. As for the production side I think there needs to be a new model. I don't want to work for some company that sells games with the target of making the game sell with employees who don't even want to work on that game but are just doing it for the paycheck. I think the best game production culture would be to work with a team of amateurs who all do the work they find enjoyable and put it all together in a game they like, and if the audience doesn't like it they can take the assets or code and modify them how they please. May have been a pipe dream before but maybe ai will make it easier.

>>21898 nah dude look at a list of ps5 exclusives there is just less effort being put into games now. the issue is that every company in the games industry sees themselves as a game company. which means resources put into loli panty quest viii could just as easily be put into minority battle royale. It sucks but we've reached the point where games are mainstream but the products aren't considered differentiated like cars, motorcycles and suvs.

>>21329 Oh cry me a fucking river, voting with your wallet works wonders as the many layoffs have proven. First the masses are regular gamers who dont give a fuck about gaming news, they go to shop and buy what the think is fun, and you should never follow the masses SHEEEEEP. Second stop treating games like it is some sophisticated medium, it just entertainment. Third pirate first and buy later and never buy on release day. 4th stop being a whiny cunt, gaming is good. And the last one is, does it smell woke, let it go broke.

i just bought ys memoire and all its junk goodies for 42 bucks. i dont have your problem.

>>25183 >but the products aren't considered differentiated like cars, motorcycles and suvs. What is this supposed to mean? Games in different genres and styles still exist and get made even right now.

i started studying japanese a few years ago after i noticed there were quite a few old jp games i wanted to play and most of the new games coming out were garbage

By living long enough to see one of the chief architects of the theft and destruction of your most beloved cultural artform get what she fucking deserves.

The whitepills are beginning to drop. Soon it's gonna rain. We're all gonna make it, bro.