When did games quit being about fun?

This certainly isn't the case with everyone, but it seems like a fair amount of people, myself included at times, have gotten to where they play a game/games just to:

- Get a high k/d (for a shooter)

- Beat it for the sake of beating it (perhaps it is a classic or something; I sometimes force myself to beat games that I rented or bought just to "tough it out" and also just in case the last 25% of the game turns out to be awesome or something).

- Beat it because they have a backlog and want to get "caught up"

I certainly have a larger backlog than I would like to admit, so I can definitely sympathize with feeling like I have some sort of duty to finish these things that I have spent my money on only to have them gather "dust" (Steam games...). I can also sympathize with wanting to beat a game if you're really into the story and everything. However, it seems to me that these kind of motivations for playing games are more common these days. Perhaps it is because I am older and/or discussions about games are more widespread than the old days where you either read something in a magazine or talked to some friends in your class at school about it. These days you could spend all your time simply reading reviews and news articles, watching gameplay videos, etc. instead of actually playing a game! Maybe the other part of this, at least for people around my age, is that when you were a kid (at least for me and my friends), getting a new game was a BIG deal. You only ended up owning a 6-12 total so you played the ever-living crap out of them. Plus, when you're a kid things seem to have more replay value and it doesn't take as much to impress you (these days I'm all like: "shit, these bullet physics aren't realistic blah blah")

What do you think? Has it always been this way and ust become more noticeable now that everyone is "connected"? Or did something start to happen a few years ago to push it in this direction?

For me, I think one of the things I did that did NOT help was I read a lot of "top 10" lists for RPGs, shooters, etc., "best game of the year" lists, "all-time classics" lists, etc. and made a big list of all the games I wanted to play (did the same for books and movies too, but that's another story), as well as started rating games after I finished them. While doing so exposed me to lots of great games that I might not have played otherwise, I feel like it has, at times, pushed me more towards playing games because they are on my to-do list rather than because they are supposed to be entertaining. Personally, I guess I'll keep my list, but won't try to think of it as something I have to get done as quickly as possible or something. Instead, I'll see it as a list of things to play if I get bored or want something new to play and to be ok with the idea that I might never finish it. I'll probably be starting a spending freeze for new games though because of my backlog :-) (only exceptions might be Halo 5, MGS5 or new Batman game, but that's IT!).

Two things killed some of the fun for me: 1st person view games and even some 3rd person games with the camera being so close (those over the shoulder views, like Gears of War). And "immersion".

The 1st (and close 3rd) person view is something I'm pretty tired of. It's just that it's done soooo much. And the end result, no matter the difference in games, is to point and shoot. From Gears of War to Battlefield, I feel like I'm playing the same game because the main mechanic is the same.

The immersion part of it that I'm not liking is that games are being designed to be an experience, so it's more like an interactive movie. And ok, that movie, or experience, may be good, but after you're done there's no real reason to go back. And the game itself may not be that much fun, but you play it to see how the story will play out. Also, a lot of games are going for realism, so it makes a lot of them look similar.

There are still fun games, though (I guess depending on your definition of fun). So I'm not complaining. I still have more games than I can play through.

Personally, I'm more concerned with games being "engaging" rather than simply "fun". I don't remember some films or books on their "fun" factor, and lately, some of my favorite games aren't even traditionally "fun" like The Last of Us, Shadow of the Colossus, or even Dark Souls to some extent. I just want games to draw me into their world and allow me to live and act in them instead of simply entertaining me.

Play the lego games like right now dude! they are fun and they are awesome!

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

i could not agree with the OP and the video more.

"Fun" is very subjective and different people can enjoy playing games for a whole bunch of different reasons which may not seem "fun" for other people but there's nothing wrong with that.

Well for me, I only play games for fun. It's a hobby, not a job, so I don't feel like I'm obligated to do anything that I'm not interested in. I'll also say that ignoring the opinions of critics and whatever gamers are hyping up as the flavor of the month, has helped me in weeding out the stuff I don't like. I've been playing games long enough to recognize the type of things that I value and enjoy, and so I don't feel like I have to rely on the opinions of strangers, and especially those that have a different mindset from mine as to what constitutes a good game.

As for making personal lists, I've done that too, but again, I don't feel like I'm obligated to rate or play all of them. Instead, I use them more as a reference in case I want to buy something that I forgot the name of.

@Renegade_Fury: woah, it's been a long time i've seen you around here

Really? I'm pretty sure I post around once or twice a day on GS. If you mean Games Discussion in particular, I think the last topic I posted in (not counting today) was "your top 7 video game songs", and I think that was on Saturday. :P

Reeally, weird i haven't seen you :S

But there are a lot of games that has an amazing immersive experience, AND great gameplay at the same time. The ones that are like interactive movies are not that many.

On one hand, I like that there are some games that are like interactive movies, because some of them are genuinely interesting because of the ability to interact with a movie-like story instead of just sitting back and watching it from a recliner. On the other hand though, (way) back in the day games like Asteroids, Pac-Man, Frogger, Galaga were fun just because they were fun. There was a premise that may or may not have added an additional enjoyment factor to them, but they were enjoyable pretty much exclusively for their gameplay. Now, take a game like Halo: Combat Evolved. For many people, the gameplay was fun AND the story was interesting. I guess the games that I'm not too impressed with in particular are the ones that are supposed to have a good story but also have traditional gameplay elements to them. So, instead of setting out to be an interactive movie, the game would, for example, have an interesting/decent story but have mediocre gameplay mechanics that people only tolerate to get through the story. For example, if you played a JRPG where the story was really polished but the gameplay basically boiled down to turn-based combat where all you do is click the enemy when it is your turn then to me it seems like that would have just been much better off being an animated film/tv series or something. Another example would be a survival-like FPS where you only used one weapon throughout the entire game, there was only one enemy type whose AI was dumb as rocks, etc. but it had a good story. Unless the story was really really designed in such a way that it felt ok just to be part of an interactive movie, it seems like it would be better off just to make it a book/movie/comic/tv show.

Am I making sense?

Games were never meant to be fun, duh !

Hmm I think video games are getting a lot more fun than say games 15 years ago, just ignore the games that don't seem fun to you.

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