alt Hacker NewsI’m an ex-gamer, but I remember games in the 90’s and earlier 00’s being much more respecting of one’s time.
You could still sink a ton of time into it if you wanted do, but you could also crank out a decent amount of fun in 5-15 minutes.
Recently games seem to have been optimized to maximize play time rather than for fun density.
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I would strongly disagree. If anything, it's the other way around - a typical 90s game had a fairly steep learning curve. Often no tutorials whatsoever, difficulty could be pretty high from the get go, players were expected to essentially learn through trial and error and failing a lot. Getting familiar enough with the game mechanics to stop losing all the time would often take a while, and could be frustrating while it lasted.
These days, AAA games are optimized for "reduced friction", which in practice usually means dumbing down the mechanics and the overall gameplay to remove everything that might annoy or frustrate the player. I was playing Avowed recently and the sheer amount of convenience features (e.g. the entire rest / fast travel system) was boggling.
I don’t think it’s the time aspect. I think that on average movies and books offer far more insightful commentary on life and tell more interesting stories. That and the video game world is just less engaging than reality. Like in a video game I have to run everywhere and need to be hitting things with a sword constantly to not get bored, while in reality a walk in nature on a trail I’ve walked 100 times before is an enjoyable experience that will leave me physically and mentally in a much better place than sitting on the couch for hours.