Twilight Gap
Member
I've loved playing against friends and strangers ever since I was introduced to Smash Bros Melee many years ago. The race to improve and defeat your opponent sparked a flame in me that could no longer be quenched by single player gaming against the computer.
But here we are several gens later and I'm starting to get tired of competitive gaming, but not because I'm not good at them or the trolls are annoying or whatever. Rather, as games have become more complex and dev tools have grown more flexible, it feels like competitive games are always being changed and updated. It has reached a point where I can only enjoy these games for a short period before a patch is introduced that completely changes the mechanics, and in many cases makes it less fun.
I'm not really concerned with whether or not they are necessary or ultimately healthy for the game, but rather the fact that you can come back to a game after a while and it'll be completely different from the last time you played it. Investing in a game early on isn't as exciting as it used to be because it's going to see drastic changes at some point, and keeping up with or "adapting" to all of that is frankly exhausting. I've seemingly steered myself back towards single player and cooperative games where that is less likely to happen. Coop has always been my favorite way to play anyway, so perhaps it'll be a nice change of pace; Nevertheless, I hope this trend slows down at some point and the industry sees a shift to less volatile game design.
But here we are several gens later and I'm starting to get tired of competitive gaming, but not because I'm not good at them or the trolls are annoying or whatever. Rather, as games have become more complex and dev tools have grown more flexible, it feels like competitive games are always being changed and updated. It has reached a point where I can only enjoy these games for a short period before a patch is introduced that completely changes the mechanics, and in many cases makes it less fun.
I'm not really concerned with whether or not they are necessary or ultimately healthy for the game, but rather the fact that you can come back to a game after a while and it'll be completely different from the last time you played it. Investing in a game early on isn't as exciting as it used to be because it's going to see drastic changes at some point, and keeping up with or "adapting" to all of that is frankly exhausting. I've seemingly steered myself back towards single player and cooperative games where that is less likely to happen. Coop has always been my favorite way to play anyway, so perhaps it'll be a nice change of pace; Nevertheless, I hope this trend slows down at some point and the industry sees a shift to less volatile game design.