Ghosts of Tsushima may be the best Playstation game I have played EVER. It's a testament to how late in the console release cycle, developers are just now mastering internals. It's the ideal video game: open world, 13-century feudal Japan, Age of the Samurai. High contrast "Kurosawa" mode, 4K HDR is cinematically photoreal. I really hope it remains a Major IP for many years to come ;)
I just finished playing through Horizon Zero Dawn which had been untouched, collecting dust on the shelf for a couple years. Found more time in the pandemic and I'm wondering what else I've missed out on! The only other titles I've played with great acclaim are God of War and Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
From a brief wiki search, it seems outside of Nintendo, studios only tend to have one-hit wonders. I never played the Infamous games, but will take you on your word on Ghosts of Tsushima.
Wow - I'm really sorry you've only been exposed to bad video games until now. It's a decent game but it doesn't even come close to the best game I've ever played.
I agree with the sentiment that video games back in the day were more elaborate in other ways that matter more than what is done today. Several good or promising franchises have also been totally ruined by becoming big.
As soon as it's making large amounts of money, it garners attention from the kind of people who don't really care about anything but making money. DLCs and all the other bad shit is because the people in power aren't the ones that are passionate about making great things.
As every other mainstream game for the last ten to fifteen years, give or take, it's just a forced course of action narratively illustrated by an interrupted sequence of dull cinematic scenes; the player just follows along with very limited space--if any--for exploration, decision-making, flexibility or creativity. The open world experience is ridiculously limited, as well. Does it look good? Sure! (Although every game uses the same game engines now, making them almost identical visually). But that's not the only thing that I expect from the format.
Let's be honest here: videogames aren't nearly as elaborate as many of them were just one or two decades ago, when many developers were having fun making them and putting in tons of effort without as many market constrictions and demands. Then you have, on the other hand, indie games, which tend to be just a glorified demo which uses technical limitations to its advantage, mainly aesthetically.
If somebody showed me how videogames would look when I was a kid, in 2000, twenty years in the future, I would have been incredibly disappointed. Besides them looking more immersive and VR being far more advanced, I'd have expected that the player had become an active participant, the effective subject of the game, instead of a passive spectator that just consooms whatever's put in front of them without any critical thought.
I played it after Last of Us 2 and it just doesn't compare, especially in terms of mechanics and visuals. If there's one last game to play on PS4 it's Last of Us 2.
I got excited when I saw this - I don't game much but my son is obsessed with samurai and would love this. However, I think it's a bit violent for him - anything similar you could recommend for a 13y/o?
Gameplay, creative backstory, unique multiplayer + PVP, and countless other aspects place Dark Souls at the top of the list for me, and that’s not limited to Ps4 but all platforms.
My great grandmother used to play solitaire. The same way that many of us while away the night staring at a screen, she'd sit in her apartment wearing the spots off a pack of cards. Some oldsters will react to this news with dismay, but as I see it, our lives are richer for the innovation.
> Analysts point out that almost half of the accounted three billion are those who play only on smartphones or mobile devices. This segment is also ahead of all others in terms of growth.
This segment is incredibly lucrative for the winners. Niantic has an estimated revenue of 800 million dollars. Supercell's highest reported revenue was just over 2 billion euros. King sold to Activision Blizzard for 5.9 billion dollars in 2016. Epic is going to war with Google and Apple over Fornite money. There's Asian players that are also impressive, but I'm not familiar enough to speak on that market. These revenues and valuations are happening in a high growth market.
I think's that number is reasonable considering any PC can be used for gaming with a small investment. Just adding a $100-$150 GPU can make any old PC from the last decade capable of playing games. That's how gaming has usually worked in third world countries at least.
It's pretty striking, sure.
But depending on how they made the investigation, possibly it includes gaming down to being able to answer yes to questions like 'Have you more than a handful of times opened and used Microsoft Solitaire?', which is of course not what most people think of a PC gaming these days.
This is a trend that will continue to accelerate. And I think we grossly underestimated how much time and money people are willing to spend on video games. Although, I think production has somewhat plateau’d in the past five years. There’s VR, but I believe there will be a new category introduced within the next five years that will change the gaming landscape.
> There’s VR, but I believe there will be a new category introduced within the next five years that will change the gaming landscape.
I have been dreaming of better interfaces (controllers) for games for decades. The Wii, despite it's limited power, was a huge leap forward in how we played games. Unfortunately Nintendo is the only gaming company taking risks while Microsoft and Sony keep doubling down on graphics with the same controllers from 30 years ago. If someone made a non-VR console with VR-style controllers it would be a huge leap. Instead we keep getting the same old immersion-killing 4-button-mashing consoles and games with upgraded graphics cards.
I'm more skeptical. VR will remain a niche, and future games will feature improved graphics. The new haptic feedback on the PS5 controller will add a minor feature. Other than that, games will remain the same on the fundamentals. Couch co-op may make a comeback.
Everyone I know plays something: DoTA, candy crush, Codenames, Jackbox, online cards, Skyrim, Zelda, Witcher, DnD on Foundry, even my old relatives play various games on mobile and iPad. Whereas, the younger, especially male, people I know almost all have a gaming system of one kind or another.
I am very into Starcraft myself. It is a wonderful combination of speed, strategy, economics, deception, and accuracy.
Most of the friends I have don't play video games. There are both bubbles where everybody plays as well as bubbles where playing video games as an adult is a very foreign concept.
I discovered starcraft2 when it became free to play. I find addictive in a similar way to my LoL days, without the toxic teammates.
It's super fun and engrossing, but I have to admit I occasionally get flashes of worry about is this how I want to spend my time? To be fair, I get the same thoughts about my job.
I think the greatest video game to be played is life. Unfortunately not many people can afford to play it the fun way and things start to get boring and time start to fly by and people get drawn into simulations of some subset of it, which begs the question, shouldn’t life simply be a “simulation” of some subset of something?
What is interesting is that an affirmative to this question often makes life more “game-like” and in terms more open to the notion of it capable of being “fun to play” (and vice versa). Though once again not many people would wholeheartedly appreciate this Insight. Very unfortunately life is often filled with suffering and miseries and most (including myself) would often get blinded and overlook the nice things, as well as its game-like nature.
Perhaps getting into one of these man-made simulators is not that bad of a thing, especially if it engages the social module and in some way enriches the overall gameplay of life.
I think many progresses in science & technologies are often hindered by our tendencies to not appreciate games. As a (post)modern civilisation we often take things too seriously. Probably a feature not a bug! But on a more individual level I think taking things more lightly (while still being a responsible human being) would improve the overall quality of life. That is something I’m still trying to learn.
As someone who doesn't play any games at all and looking for a new hobby, would you recommend picking this up as one? if so, which platform/games would you recommend? (something light/fun)
some background:
I'm 45, I don't think I can handle anything too intense (even watching TV gets my heart pounding, I get too immersed and don't exactly enjoy too much adrenaline); I used to enjoy the Atari console in the 80s and then later played games on my Apple IIc and then PC, up to around year 2000 or so. Now I own an iPhone SE and Macbook air 2015, so nothing too powerful. I don't have a TV (but a decent computer screen).
EDIT: so many great suggestions for things I didn't know existed. Thank you so much!
There is always this disconnect when I read stuff like this
3 billion people is 30% or of 3 people. Ok, we go on OkCupid, we find the question "Do you enjoy playing video games" and we set that as a criteria for matches. Your matches will drop to > 1% of the population, at least as a male looking for female.
Checking another dating site that has things people like. The site claims 10 million users, only 200k have selected "like games" or 2%, vastly different than the article's claimed 30%
I get some of the reasons for the difference like not considering yourself a gamer yet plays Covet Fashion an hour a day.
Still, in daily life the number of people I meet who would claim to like games in any form doesn't match that 30% number.
The bit many people are not realizing is that e-sports will overtake current sports within the next few decades.
For now, e-sports is at that sweet spot of good production value and a reasonable amount of advertising. I predict we'll be back to sitting through 3-5 minutes of commercials for every 15 minutes of gameplay within the next decade as advertisers realize how willing gamers are to spend money on virtual stuff.
I remember being a college freshman in 2001 and playing PC games, namely Rogue Spear and Counter-Strike online with friends in my dorm room. I talked with them on a headset with a microphone using Roger Wilco and Battlecom. A lot of the guys I lived with in the dorm thought it was really weird that I talked to people online playing video games. Some would make fun of me.
Then Halo came out in November, and in the spring semester, when everyone returned to school after the holidays, and a lot of people had new XBoxes with Halo, nobody thought it was weird anymore. Almost overnight, online video games became normalized, at least to college age dudes.
Even so, society still stereotype video games and video gamers as juvenile and waste of time.
This is apparent especially in dating circles, where more often than not, listing video games as hobby for a males is a negative signal to the opposite sex.
> This is apparent especially in dating circles, where more often than not, listing video games as hobby for a males is a negative signal to the opposite sex.
This is almost certainly because of the small portion of men who see "video games" as a personality rather than a hobby and are probably quite strongly responsible for society's view on "gamers" too.
It is quite ridiculous since scrolling through social media and texting endlessly, spending hours on youtube or netflix, gossiping for hours, or playing the dating game (notice I said dating game, not dating) are an equal waste of time. There's a point where any activity becomes an obsession and that's when it becomes a problem.
If you aren't obsessing and are otherwise stable (no debt, bills are paid, job, housing), then it doesn't matter what others say about them. We could be doing something more productive than arguing on HackerNews, yet here we are. Life isn't about being productive 100% of our lives since nothing really does matter anyway.
In a thousand, million or billion years, most (if not all of us) will be forgotten.
The issue is that very often video games are addicitive and you are very likely to neglect everyone including yourself to feed that addiction. It's pretty much like a gambling addiction. Now I wonder why it's a negative on dating circles...
> listing video games as hobby for a males is a negative signal to the opposite sex
Maybe those girls make own observations on the behavioral difference between a guy who takes gaming as an identity and lists it as important vs guy who sometimes plays games.
perhaps it's "wasting time" that is considered "juvenile" and just because more people have enough time to waste some of it doesn't make playing games any more "adult".
I have nothing against games, it's no better or worse than any other hobby or time-killing activity. It's just stunning that so many people are so busy and yet have so much free time.
This doesn't surprise me at all, I spend 5x times more money on video games per year than dev education and I don't even game that much, maybe once a month. Video game markets just gonna keep getting bigger.
I talked to an executive at Skillz a few years ago and she told me that one of their main growth strategies was actually to target prospective women that could be gamers. The way it worked was that a few of Skillz executives were in this market, women who loved video gaming but businesses at the time refused to recognize it.
Imagine a woman who plays mobile games just to kill time at the bus stop, etc. Exec told me that she had friends like this and she has really easily gotten them to adopt all sorts of gaming and knew how easy it was to do this.
So when they looked at it like that, the market for people who were ignored was massive and that's one of the reasons why they grew so fast.
I think another underserved video game niche is our elderly... but maybe that's a separate discussion
My father still does crosswords daily. Much of this amounts to digitised Soduku, Crosswords, Solitaire etc.. - passing time on light fare.
A new Netflix special on games 'High Score' touches on the gender issues and how some games for whatever reason have entirely different demographic appeal: Pac Man and Tetris were (still in the later case) disproportionately popular among women.
The medium obviously allows for much more, but we can't ignore the social parallels.
> However, only about 250 million people are active console users who regularly buy new games for them. Although they represent only 8% of the total number of gamers, this is the group with the highest revenue per person.
Why is there an "although" at the beginning of that sentence? Why wouldn't they be generating the highest revenue person?
I wish there was a better way to preserve the history of video games, as operating systems become incompatible, emulators become obsolete, and some things just can't be emulated accurately or faithfully anyway (like the 3DS).
Ironically, YouTube is probably the best archive of video games that we have.
[+] [-] ArtWomb|5 years ago|reply
https://blog.selfshadow.com/publications/s2020-shading-cours...
[+] [-] compscistd|5 years ago|reply
From a brief wiki search, it seems outside of Nintendo, studios only tend to have one-hit wonders. I never played the Infamous games, but will take you on your word on Ghosts of Tsushima.
[+] [-] IceDane|5 years ago|reply
I agree with the sentiment that video games back in the day were more elaborate in other ways that matter more than what is done today. Several good or promising franchises have also been totally ruined by becoming big.
As soon as it's making large amounts of money, it garners attention from the kind of people who don't really care about anything but making money. DLCs and all the other bad shit is because the people in power aren't the ones that are passionate about making great things.
[+] [-] tbrock|5 years ago|reply
So damn good.
[+] [-] Funes-|5 years ago|reply
Let's be honest here: videogames aren't nearly as elaborate as many of them were just one or two decades ago, when many developers were having fun making them and putting in tons of effort without as many market constrictions and demands. Then you have, on the other hand, indie games, which tend to be just a glorified demo which uses technical limitations to its advantage, mainly aesthetically.
If somebody showed me how videogames would look when I was a kid, in 2000, twenty years in the future, I would have been incredibly disappointed. Besides them looking more immersive and VR being far more advanced, I'd have expected that the player had become an active participant, the effective subject of the game, instead of a passive spectator that just consooms whatever's put in front of them without any critical thought.
[+] [-] WrtCdEvrydy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martco|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danjc|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onemiketwelve|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catsarebetter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evo_9|5 years ago|reply
Gameplay, creative backstory, unique multiplayer + PVP, and countless other aspects place Dark Souls at the top of the list for me, and that’s not limited to Ps4 but all platforms.
[+] [-] klyrs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjo590|5 years ago|reply
This segment is incredibly lucrative for the winners. Niantic has an estimated revenue of 800 million dollars. Supercell's highest reported revenue was just over 2 billion euros. King sold to Activision Blizzard for 5.9 billion dollars in 2016. Epic is going to war with Google and Apple over Fornite money. There's Asian players that are also impressive, but I'm not familiar enough to speak on that market. These revenues and valuations are happening in a high growth market.
[+] [-] cgrealy|5 years ago|reply
I would guess that number correlates to “90% of people under a certain age (50??) who have access to a device”.
That 1.5 billion play games on PC is shocking to me.
[+] [-] as1mov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etiam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitxbit|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neixidbeksoxyd|5 years ago|reply
I have been dreaming of better interfaces (controllers) for games for decades. The Wii, despite it's limited power, was a huge leap forward in how we played games. Unfortunately Nintendo is the only gaming company taking risks while Microsoft and Sony keep doubling down on graphics with the same controllers from 30 years ago. If someone made a non-VR console with VR-style controllers it would be a huge leap. Instead we keep getting the same old immersion-killing 4-button-mashing consoles and games with upgraded graphics cards.
[+] [-] HenryKissinger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chillwaves|5 years ago|reply
Like with social media, the psychological implications are not clear.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 2muchcoffeeman|5 years ago|reply
Production value or number of games? I still see lots of games being made. But there most stuff to wade through to find a good one.
[+] [-] Dumblydorr|5 years ago|reply
I am very into Starcraft myself. It is a wonderful combination of speed, strategy, economics, deception, and accuracy.
[+] [-] mudita|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hazbot|5 years ago|reply
It's super fun and engrossing, but I have to admit I occasionally get flashes of worry about is this how I want to spend my time? To be fair, I get the same thoughts about my job.
[+] [-] archibaldJ|5 years ago|reply
What is interesting is that an affirmative to this question often makes life more “game-like” and in terms more open to the notion of it capable of being “fun to play” (and vice versa). Though once again not many people would wholeheartedly appreciate this Insight. Very unfortunately life is often filled with suffering and miseries and most (including myself) would often get blinded and overlook the nice things, as well as its game-like nature.
Perhaps getting into one of these man-made simulators is not that bad of a thing, especially if it engages the social module and in some way enriches the overall gameplay of life.
I think many progresses in science & technologies are often hindered by our tendencies to not appreciate games. As a (post)modern civilisation we often take things too seriously. Probably a feature not a bug! But on a more individual level I think taking things more lightly (while still being a responsible human being) would improve the overall quality of life. That is something I’m still trying to learn.
[+] [-] gingerlime|5 years ago|reply
some background:
I'm 45, I don't think I can handle anything too intense (even watching TV gets my heart pounding, I get too immersed and don't exactly enjoy too much adrenaline); I used to enjoy the Atari console in the 80s and then later played games on my Apple IIc and then PC, up to around year 2000 or so. Now I own an iPhone SE and Macbook air 2015, so nothing too powerful. I don't have a TV (but a decent computer screen).
EDIT: so many great suggestions for things I didn't know existed. Thank you so much!
[+] [-] seekinggamer|5 years ago|reply
3 billion people is 30% or of 3 people. Ok, we go on OkCupid, we find the question "Do you enjoy playing video games" and we set that as a criteria for matches. Your matches will drop to > 1% of the population, at least as a male looking for female.
Checking another dating site that has things people like. The site claims 10 million users, only 200k have selected "like games" or 2%, vastly different than the article's claimed 30%
I get some of the reasons for the difference like not considering yourself a gamer yet plays Covet Fashion an hour a day.
Still, in daily life the number of people I meet who would claim to like games in any form doesn't match that 30% number.
[+] [-] alexashka|5 years ago|reply
For now, e-sports is at that sweet spot of good production value and a reasonable amount of advertising. I predict we'll be back to sitting through 3-5 minutes of commercials for every 15 minutes of gameplay within the next decade as advertisers realize how willing gamers are to spend money on virtual stuff.
[+] [-] hoorayimhelping|5 years ago|reply
Then Halo came out in November, and in the spring semester, when everyone returned to school after the holidays, and a lot of people had new XBoxes with Halo, nobody thought it was weird anymore. Almost overnight, online video games became normalized, at least to college age dudes.
[+] [-] arvinsim|5 years ago|reply
This is apparent especially in dating circles, where more often than not, listing video games as hobby for a males is a negative signal to the opposite sex.
[+] [-] lexicality|5 years ago|reply
This is almost certainly because of the small portion of men who see "video games" as a personality rather than a hobby and are probably quite strongly responsible for society's view on "gamers" too.
One loud and toxic apple spoils the batch etc
[+] [-] LockAndLol|5 years ago|reply
If you aren't obsessing and are otherwise stable (no debt, bills are paid, job, housing), then it doesn't matter what others say about them. We could be doing something more productive than arguing on HackerNews, yet here we are. Life isn't about being productive 100% of our lives since nothing really does matter anyway.
In a thousand, million or billion years, most (if not all of us) will be forgotten.
[+] [-] thefounder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jherdman|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watwut|5 years ago|reply
Maybe those girls make own observations on the behavioral difference between a guy who takes gaming as an identity and lists it as important vs guy who sometimes plays games.
People look for matches.
[+] [-] chillwaves|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bttrfl|5 years ago|reply
I have nothing against games, it's no better or worse than any other hobby or time-killing activity. It's just stunning that so many people are so busy and yet have so much free time.
[+] [-] GlennS|5 years ago|reply
(Unless you have a realistic plan to change it.)
[+] [-] person_of_color|5 years ago|reply
Sign up to a MOOC, geez.
[+] [-] jachell|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catsarebetter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] catsarebetter|5 years ago|reply
Imagine a woman who plays mobile games just to kill time at the bus stop, etc. Exec told me that she had friends like this and she has really easily gotten them to adopt all sorts of gaming and knew how easy it was to do this.
So when they looked at it like that, the market for people who were ignored was massive and that's one of the reasons why they grew so fast.
I think another underserved video game niche is our elderly... but maybe that's a separate discussion
[+] [-] tumidpandora|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ojciecczas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] op03|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jariel|5 years ago|reply
A new Netflix special on games 'High Score' touches on the gender issues and how some games for whatever reason have entirely different demographic appeal: Pac Man and Tetris were (still in the later case) disproportionately popular among women.
The medium obviously allows for much more, but we can't ignore the social parallels.
[+] [-] choward|5 years ago|reply
Why is there an "although" at the beginning of that sentence? Why wouldn't they be generating the highest revenue person?
[+] [-] Razengan|5 years ago|reply
Ironically, YouTube is probably the best archive of video games that we have.