listen guys here's the thing I'm old I
have gray hairs but there's one thing
that's been in my life since my hair was
short and full of color
and that's video games
but recently I've realized that I spend
a lot more time consuming content about
video games and then I do actually
playing video games in fact in the past
couple years there's been months at a
time where I did not play a single
minute of video games and it most
certainly is not because I'm a busy and
accomplished adult with a roaring career
in social life because quite the
opposite my life mostly revolves around
watching YouTube videos streams and
shows but I actively miss playing video
games and spending countless hours
immersing myself in creative worlds and
game systems and it seems like I'm the
only one with this problem all my
friends still have the games that
they're obsessed with and play all the
time I personally don't enjoy most of
those games since apparently I'm a
boomer that hates games now so what's
the deal
am I growing out of this hobby that I've
Loved for so long or perhaps I'm just
jaded from the infestation of corporate
greeting it is insatiable hunger for
infinite growth Afflicted Upon Us in
every corner in every game with cash
shops and battle passes so many battle
passes and coins and the crystals you
have to buy and the crystals you don't
get the right amount of crystals and it
doesn't make sense for all the items in
the shop because they have you have a
little left over because they want you
to spend more money
or maybe games are just bad now
or is it some other nuanced collection
of reasons that I'm going to spend the
rest of this video exploring and talking
about
yeah I know games are definitely just
bad now
[Music]
it was the early 90s one of my earliest
most Vivid memories of video games was
the Christmas that I got a Super
Nintendo I got this Mickey Mouse game
called the magical quest Starring Mickey
Mouse I Remember just laying down in my
living room for hours playing on my
little CRT TV it was like crack to my
tiny little underdeveloped brain just
seen pixels moving at my command I was
hooked and that was it the floodgates
were open throwing Foot Clan ninjas into
the screen and turn all the time
collecting all the letters and Donkey
Kong Country
was it's Super Mario World solving
puzzles with all the cool items and the
link to the past that Kick-Ass intro and
Super Metroid I was hyped and stressed
out of my little mind for that this era
was Peak gaming and would forever
solidify me as a Nintendo fanboy
but then a few years later the most
fateful day of any kid growing up in the
mid 90s the Christmas where I got mine
it was a sick ass green one that was
bundled with a Donkey Kong 64 and that
little rampack but now games were 3D
Donkey Kong Mario Zelda all had an
entirely new dimension to explore opened
up so many gameplay options but that
wasn't all because you could play with
four players Mario Kart Mario Party
Smash Bros the rise of party games you
can sit on the couch with your friends
smacking controllers out of each other's
hands accuse them of cheating ruin
friendships it was great the party games
weren't the only thing that benefited
from the four controller slots
foreign
first person shooters my friends and I
spent countless hours on Goldeneye 64.
we even used to get cardboard boxes and
tape them up to the screen to section it
off so that you couldn't screen look we
took that [ __ ] very seriously now by
this time first person shooters already
existed on PC but I had the crappiest
Dell that was cheap and out of date even
for the late 90s though I was still able
to play Bangers like Roller Coaster
Tycoon Age of Empires 2 Starcraft I knew
the PC was eventually going to be where
it's at for me but for now the next
console era was upon us
foreign
[Music]
I really feel like there was two games
in particular that defined this
generation for me personally the first
game was Smash Bros there was so many
more characters in the first game so
many more stages it controlled
beautifully it was a masterpiece one
time my parents made us go play outside
and so we stuck the TV up against the
window and threw the controllers out
there and so we were all just standing
outside playing Smash Bros through a
window and the second game was time
Splitters 2. from the same developers of
GoldenEye dinosaurs would become my
favorite shooter to this day
the game had an insane amount of game
modes tons of characters a map editor
that you make your own story missions it
had it all one of my friends was a
genius when it came to making maps and
every time we got together he had a
couple new maps that had some
interesting gimmick that completely
changed the way we played the game one
of my favorite maps of his was one where
it was just this Square it was like a
grid of rooms with doors and we would
run around with one shot one kill
baseball bats it was terrifying if
you've never played time slitters uh I'm
sorry you you're really missing out
the error of couch gaming would not last
forever though and in fact it was soon
coming to a close Monday March 15 2004.
[Music]
this was the day that it created my
first RuneScape account it would be my
first introduction into the world of
MMOs the genre that encapsulated
everything that I loved about gaming the
adventure the immersion puzzle solving
crafting and I could play and enjoy it
with my friends and hundreds of people
across the world I had no idea what I
was doing but I was loving every minute
of it
later that year a certain other MMO
would release World of Warcraft
unfortunately there was one issue
I still had dial up internet
there would be a few years until I got
out of dial up hell so in the meantime
the only way I could play World of
Warcraft was either by playing at
friend's house or sneaking the
installation out of the school computers
in the library which I absolutely did
they were not very well managed at the
time I wouldn't hit max level in World
of Warcraft until the tail end of Bernie
Crusade just before Wrath but by then
World of Warcraft was the game that I
played and it would remain that way for
several years until about halfway
through my senior year of high school
that's when I got beta access to
Starcraft 2 wings of Liberty my friends
and I were so hyped for this game we
spent every day in school in our
computer class just playing Starcraft 2.
I fell in love with Competitive Gaming
and Esports because of Starcraft 2. it
was the first game that I actually tried
to play competitively and work my way up
a ranked ladder I would practice almost
every day with friends watch day nine of
husky videos aspirations of going pro
I only ever made it to Platte but
getting the plat felt incredible I
remember my friend and I used to wake up
at like five in the morning to watch the
GSL
and in 2011 as a broke college student
in Orlando Florida I bought a ticket to
MLG using a literal Bank of coins but it
was such an incredible experience my
friends and I got to meet all of our
favorite players Huck in control we also
got to meet day nine Husky artosis and
tasteless it would be my very first and
unfortunately my very last live gaming
event
and eventually Starcraft 2 would give
way to League of Legends which a few
years later gave way to Smite which
would be the last competitive esport
game that I played seriously
none of them really grabbed me in the
same way that Starcraft 2 did and I'm
not sure any other competitive esport
ever will
this was about the peak of gaming in my
life the best of it all came before and
I feel like I can pinpoint the exact
year that the steep slope downward began
and that year was 2014.
this was the year that Starcraft was all
but dead the year Warlords of Draenor
came out the first ever World of
Warcraft expansion that I did not buy or
play
this was the year destiny released and
was a massive disappointment
this was the year that Smite introduced
loot boxes
this was the year that WildStar released
and failed
and every year on from this point just
seemed to be one big disappointment
after another I felt more and more
common for games to release unfinished
or broken or have some predatory
monetization every year seemed worse
than the last
gaming seems different now
the gaming industry has grown incredibly
fast since I first picked up a
controller in fact in 2021 the games
industry raked in more cash than music
and film combined a good bit of this
growth can be attributed to the rise of
mobile gaming which in 2021 made up 45
of the total revenue in the industry and
of course the stench of this heaping
pile of cash would not go unnoticed by
the insectoid swarm of c-suite
Executives and with their grubby little
[ __ ] stained appendages and their dungus
touch they have pushed hard to make
console and PC gaming monetization more
closely resembled out of a mobile game
attempting to normalize all the same
underhanded tactics which apply
psychological manipulation in various
ways to pry as much money as they can
out of its users in a predatory manner
whether it's feeding off a player's
addictions by implementing gambling
adjacent mechanics or their frustration
by creating problems and selling back
the solutions or fomo with limited time
buy now expensive skin the online nature
of the live service model has primed
games for these sort of exploitations
it's not completely without its pushback
though as we Gamers have been successful
in combating some of these changes as is
the case with loot boxes as we've been
pretty much eradicated those from most
PC and console games at this point
though it definitely seems like a losing
battle as every year more ground gives
way to the normalization of such
strategies in like a one step forward 10
step back kind of way for example if we
look back it wasn't that long ago when
DLC was considered outrageous it was
seen as devs taking content out of the
original game and holding it back to
sell later but as always the ground gave
way and the conversation shifted to
whether or not it was day one DLC or how
much effort they put into the DLC if the
content was worth it fast forward to
today where similar conversations are
being had about the Pay to Win debate
where at first any pay to win is
completely unacceptable to now being
able to find conversations about how a
certain game is not that pay to win but
complaining about monetization in games
is nothing new or original in fact it's
an oversaturated market and at this
point point just feels like being a dead
horse it seems you'll never get enough
people to care about this topic and
until that happens nothing will change
instead I'd like to talk about a bit of
a hot take here that in the past 10
years gaming really hasn't changed much
at all the gaming industry feels pretty
stagnant if I compare games as they are
now to how I thought they would be by
now as a kid the picture is very
disappointing as a kid who just
discovered MMOs like RuneScape in World
of Warcraft I was blown away by the idea
of what MMOs could be in the future I
would hop off World of Warcraft and go
play Dungeons and Dragons and think man
one day World of Warcraft is going to
have the same level of choice and
consequence that I can have with my
imagination playing DND now obviously
that hasn't happened yet and as a kid I
didn't know anything about game
development but I've heard a similar
observation from raspoon in his video
series gaming for a non-gamer which is a
great series and I recommend you check
it out where he discusses his wife's
disappointment discovering video games
for the first time
her expectations for what she thought
she could do in each game were always
different than the reality and I think
as she realized that games were more
simple than she at first assumed some of
the Intrigue about them faded there's a
massive lack of innovation and risk
taking in the AAA space as we see games
like Skyrim being released a billion
times The Last of Us is getting its
third version of the game Call of Duty
ran out of ideas and decided to just
loop back around and start re-releasing
their games in order again hoping nobody
would notice but they somehow made all
the games worse so everyone noticed
which brings me to my next point where
not only are companies not really
interested in innovating at all but they
seem to be actively taking steps
backwards in Innovation if you look at
something like the original fallout's
Super in-depth dialogue system versus
Fallout 4's dialogue system it's a huge
step back and that's a tame example it
gets so much worse blizzard for example
figured out that they can retroactively
ruin a 20 year old game with Warcraft 3
reforged well I guess that was pretty
Innovative the only real Innovation is
coming out of this industry are coming
from Indie developers and modders the
latter of which is responsible for the
two biggest genres in the past decade
and that's without even the expectation
of getting paid isn't that weird kind of
goes against the conventional capitalist
thinking huh looking at the trajectory
of the industry it's really hard to not
just be depressed about it all and
wonder if the industry can ever course
correct
[Music]
it's weird to think that things like
YouTube Reddit and all these other
social media sites haven't really been
around that long and yet it's sometimes
hard to remember what it was like before
they existed these sites have made data
mining crowdsourced information and
video guides all accessible to everyone
at all times in some cases the internet
will have every bit of information about
every mechanic and Secret in a given
game before they even release and all of
these things have drastically changed
how we play video games
let's take a look at a game like World
of Warcraft if I had to describe how I
feel playing retail wow in one word it
would be emptiness not because of a lack
of content necessarily so much as the
game just kind of feels soulless where
before the game was about Adventure and
Discovery it is instead now a game about
optimization it's essentially a solved
game where add-ons and logs have
optimized gameplay to a t with little
room for experimentation or creativity
which is fine I mean no one likes to
play sub optimally I'm not trying to
vilify optimization as it can be quite
fun for some people take speed running
for example speedrunning is such an
interesting hobby to me it's something
I've always wanted to get into but I've
always felt a little intimidated by the
stuff that people are able to achieve
with speedrunning is truly mind-blowing
some of which is only really possible
because of the interconnected nature of
modern gaming or sharing glitches and
exploits is part of the fun of
collectively iterating on runs to shave
off more and more time but then if you
look at something like RuneScape one of
the most solved games that has become
literally all about the optimization
you'll find a community who's made it a
tradition of coming up with off-the-wall
challenges and restrictions inflicted
upon their accounts also known as
snowflake accounts so they are forced to
forge their own path there's no guide to
follow on how to clear one of the
hardest raids in old school RuneScape if
you're not allowed to leave the swamp
Zone but one man after three years of
theory crafting grinding and 33 very
entertaining YouTube videos was able to
accomplish that goal with hundreds and
thousands of people watching and loving
it
so clearly the problem for World of
Warcraft isn't just optimization itself
it's that optimization isn't just
confined to the few who enjoy it but
instead sort of forced onto everyone
else with all these tools available to
everyone and things like Raider i o
assigning public completion scores
everyone is expected to be fully
optimized or not play the game because
again no one likes to play sub optimally
ignorance truly is bliss it's my opinion
that this is the real reason why World
of Warcraft has been struggling like
asman gold has said blizzard has ignored
the Casual audience and failed to
produce fun and compelling activities
that aren't just about the optimization
instead they just continue to double
down on the raids and dungeons catering
to this nature of gameplay now as of
this recording dragonfly has not
released yet so maybe that will be the
expansion that fixes this issue but it's
not just retail a lot of players were
excited about classic and logged in
expecting to recapture that nostalgic
sense of adventure
but things are too different now the way
we play games is too different now the
game didn't seem nearly as hard as they
remembered the world's not as vast but I
think it comes down to the fact that
every facet of the game has been solved
already and that the joy of the original
release lied in the discovery and the
journey now this is not everyone's
opinion there's still plenty of people
that very much enjoyed Classic this is
mostly just anecdotal sentiment from me
and my friends but I do think that this
might be why so many people get excited
whenever a new MMO is released it's a
chance to discover things for the first
time to not be beholden to the methods
and builds that someone else already
figured out and everyone is expected to
use a chance for you to be the one that
discovers those methods but For Better
or For Worse this is just the way the
world is now
maybe someday a game will come out that
is immune to this phenomenon a game that
can be solved where the discovery never
goes away
doesn't seem possible
but who knows maybe someday
[Music]
I don't feel like a different person
I feel like I always have been and
always will be me but I've changed my
mind and opinions on a lot of things in
the past 10 years growing up and dealing
with adult responsibilities can be
really stressful you're faced with a lot
of change and uncertainty and it can be
really easy to come to worry and regret
but worry and regret are just a waste of
time time that can be better spent
having fun you know people say video
games are a waste of time but personally
I think they're having fun and enjoying
your life is the best way to spend your
time but what do you do if you no longer
enjoy your favorite hobby with this fog
hanging over my head I began Reminiscing
on how I used to enjoy games I used to
spend countless hours grinding the
ladder in Starcraft 2 working on
refining builds seeing small
improvements over time making
quantifiable progress in the skill feels
so good ah the dopamine but today if you
asked me to play just about any
competitive game I could not be [ __ ]
bothered I haven't played League of
Legends in like nine years but I booted
it up a couple of months ago my friends
were telling me about all the new
Champions and the new metas and the new
builds and I just wanted to go take a
nap it's because my attention span is
shot is the lack of elasticity in my
rotting brain protesting against me
trying to shove even more useless [ __ ]
into it maybe both I used to have the
drive to spend hours learning everything
I could about a new game there were
times where all I could think about was
whatever game I was currently playing
thinking about what I wanted to
accomplish next how I was going to do it
I wouldn't stop until I finished
nowadays I'd be lucky to stick with the
game for more than a couple weeks before
I'm over it regardless if I actually
finished it or not so then are there any
games that I do enjoy after so many
disappointing letdowns and trying to
enjoy games that just start to annoy me
after two weeks this question
legitimately crossed my mind and at the
peak of my jadedness one game proved to
me that I did still indeed have the
capacity to fall in love with the game
and that game was malheim a game that
isn't even finished yet but a game
that's so perfectly created a sense of
adventure and discovery that it reminded
me why I love gaming to begin with
so it seems there may still be remnants
of a gamer deep underneath all the
jadedness I've proven to myself that I
definitely haven't outgrown the hobby
maybe I've just been playing the wrong
games and sure the world is different
and the way we play games is different
but they're still fun to be had and
despite the industry's best efforts to
cannibalize itself there will always be
passionate Indie developers and modders
to pick up the slack and make good games
and experiences and maybe that's enough
well it kind of has to be enough but I'm
determined to rekindle my love of gaming
and that will be my New Year's
resolution I will begin my search to
find the fun
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
thank you
[Music]