• 26 minutes

    I miss community servers. Each had its own identity and you could pop in and out without being penalized. Being locked in to a 30+ minute sweatfest with people I don’t know, or like, has never been appealing to me.

  • Got drunk and played megaman 11 with siblings, passing around the controller, cracking jokes about how megaman’s ow sound seemed weirdly gay and horny in this one. I was so bad I kept getting him hurt and it sounded like a gay porn.

    My sister asks “isn’t that supposed to be a robot child?”

    Me: “He’s been a child since the 80s and his voice is lower now. He’s a megaMAN now, and how dare you demean the short king fighting for your safety over his robo masochim kink and short stature.”

    Brother: “yea he can’t help he was built that way. You’re a monster. Don’t kink shame”

    Me and bro: -glare-

    Sister (who is in a poly relationship and very much the alternachick of the family): “….what the fuck is happening here?”

    Single player games are still fun when played together.

  • The live service model has been a plague on gaming and has basically killed every bit of enjoyment I’m getting out of multiplayer game nowadays. Shit’s like having a job. You leave for two weeks and you might as well be playing a different game. Leave for a month? Maybe the game don’t even exist anymore. It’s exhausting.

  • 3 hours

    The closest thing to multiplayer I touch now days are Fromsoft invasions.

    I play exclusively on consoles, and enjoy a slower pace to gaming.

    Have a huge backlog of games I haven’t touched, and a few that I just keep coming back to.

    Really gotten into permadeath gaming, which slows things down even more, but makes every decision and hour of gaming truly count.

    Factorio, Cities Skylines, Far Cry 2, Subnautica, the Fromsoft catalogue, Mass Effect, I’ll do a full play through at least once a year.

    Finally playing the Witcher III while listening to the book on audio.

    I get why people enjoy multiplayer games, but it hasn’t been for me for a long time.

    I think the last one I really spent any time on was America’s Army around 2006.

  • 6 hours

    This is going to be extremely niche, but I find the surf mini game in Counter Strike Source to be incredibly relaxing and rewarding while also being a quasi multiplayer game. The community is quite helpful and friendly and there are almost 1000 different maps of all skill levels so there is something for everyone if you are into movement based mechanics.

  • 3 hours

    I’ve recently been playing Tales of Maj’Eyal and it’s such a nice vibe. There’s an in-game chat for people just going about playing their single-player adventures, generally filled with kind and intelligent people. The game is complex enough that being able to ask questions in the chat is a nice option.

  • 4 hours

    I’m not opposed to playing multiplayer games. But I’m not going to be playing the vast majority of modern multiplayer titles.

    Most of the time I wonder if there is even another player on the other end of modern game, or if it’s just bots

    I like playing old games organized on discord and sites like game date

  • 9 hours

    I’m in my early 40s. Back then, I used to play Quake 3, UT 99 and Tribes 2 competitively. Not anymore. Life is stressful enough, and I don’t want to add to that by playing competitively. I want to relax by playing story-based games. I also play a lot of games on easy mode so that I can truly enjoy the story.

    • About the same, but I would love to go to a lan party every now and then and actually game. I stopped going when people were more interested in sharing their puddle deep political takes then gaming and that was before gamergate. I can only imagine how bad it would be now.

      People were more relaxed a lan parties and open server browser games. Rank tracking and matchmaking made everyone a sweaty gamer.

    • Exact same. I can pause when needed and handle priorities. Fuck MP games that drive up my blood pressure. The only MP games now are co-op, like L4D2

  • 7 hours

    Online multiplayer games used to be fub but they have really gone downhill recently.

    The most fun I have ever had in a video game was hunting a bear in RDR2 to make clothing with the pelt. It took several days but I think that’s what made finding the bear so satisfying.

  • I have over 1500 hours into The Witcher 3.

    Sometimes I think at least 500 of those hours are just me loading into the game after a long week, finding an isolated spot on the map, and just staring into the sunset while the wind howls in my headset.

    • I really love the atmosphere of skellige. Something about it is so nostalgic, the blowing wind, the clouds that look like a huge storm is about to roll in.

      • I want to live on Aard Skellige. It’s so beautiful, you have everything, ocean, forest, mountains, meadows, cliffs, creeks/waterfalls, all of it.

    • This is something I’ll do with an especially pretty game. Find a pretty view and just set up camp watching the world. Works even better with weather and night/day cycles in the game.

    • every time it rains i think or sing to myself “it’s rainin’, it’s pourin’, emperor emhyr’s whorin’”

  • 5 hours

    I don’t play multiplayer games anymore.

    First off, they always seem to enable the worst of game companies trying to financially ruin their players.

    Second off, I’m in my 40s and my reaction time isn’t what it was when I used to play Counter-Strike. You can’t improve an aged reaction time nearly as easily, nor can you dedicate the time that you would need to to get somewhat better, let alone competitive. Getting repeatedly stomped isn’t fun.

    Third off, I don’t like the constant recycling of content that you see in multiplayer games. A handful of maps are expected to last you infinite plays. I like changes of scenery, storylines, and varied experiences. Doing the same thing over and over again is just boring.

    Fourth off, player communities in some games are aggressively dogshit and I really don’t want to interact with them at all.

    • It’s unlikely your reaction time has changed much in your 40s. You probably have well over a decade before that starts to happen. On your first couple of tries, reacting to something is going to seem impossible. After you’ve seen the same stimuli and practiced what you should do in response, you’ll be right around where teens and 20-somethings are. If you don’t want to put the time in to make that happen, that’s fine, but don’t think it’s unattainable to get good at a given multiplayer if you were otherwise interested in doing so. E-sports are now old enough that we’ve seen enough folks age into their 40s and remain top talent, as long as that remained an ideal career choice for them when so few are going to be able to support themselves in that career.

      • 2 hours

        I used to have 50ms reaction time 15+ years ago as a teenager. Now I have 300ms reaction time according to the previously linked test. I’m not sure if it’s age or laziness though. I really really wanted to beat Zombie Goku back then and actually trained hard for it

      • 11 hours

        Watching NakeyJakey’s video on competitive shooters put into perspective how hard it really is. I knew I wasn’t cut out for it, but that just demonstrated how not cut out for it I was.

    • I’m 32. I just recently started getting better aim than I ever had throughout my entire 20’s. When it comes to gaming, age doesn’t really matter as much.

    • 10 hours

      Doing the same thing over and over again he’s boring.

      That’s also a factor in the gameplay itself.

      Competitive multiplayer games will always develop a ‘meta’ that you have to adhere to or respond to in order to be at all competitive.

      In single player games, you can make a replay interesting by playing it a different way, trying different strategies even if they’re non-optimal, just to have the novel experience of playing the game a different way. Things like, “I think I’m going to try doing a no-vehicles run in Subnautica.” or “I think I’ll try Cyberpunk with a melee-focused solo build this time.” But stuff like that just isn’t viable in competitive multiplayer. You will be defeated early and often if you stray too far from the meta.

      So not only are you playing the same few maps over and over, you’re playing the same few tactics and strategies over and over, making things boring from that angle as well.

      • 6 hours

        In single player games you can also cheat a little,bug abuse and glitch the game for giggles without ruining the exp for others too

    • 11 hours

      Oh. It’s clear you haven’t played multiplayer games for a long time, otherwise this false statement would not have come up:

      Third off, I don’t like the constant recycling of content that you see in multiplayer games. One map is expected to last you infinite plays. I like changes of scenery and story.

      Maps rotate constantly and change, active and passive maps, community maps.

      • 11 hours

        Oh I obviously understand that there are multiple (if not dozens of) maps, but how many times are you expected to play those maps over and over again? Without plot progression, I just don’t find it interesting.

  • Yes, it’s a peaceful life. It sucks when i finally can sit down in the evening and start up a game and then getting insta killed by teenager who has nothing to than practice all day.

    Or team based PvE games where it’s just trying to keep up with the speedrunners farming.

    In addition getting 30 min of uninterrupted time can be a luxury, so pause feature is a must have.

    • In addition getting 30 min of uninterrupted time can be a luxury, so pause feature is a must have.

      Yeah exactly. I need a game I can just pickup and put down on a moments notice.

    • 9 hours

      start up a game and then getting insta killed by teenager

      One of my younger coworkers was just complaining about that and I had the pleasure of informing them they were now an old man.

  • Don’t forget all the new CoD, battlefield, and even tarkov (soon) is requiring TPM 2.0, secure boot, and actively blocking linux making it impossible to even play them.

    • 9 hours

      I’ve yet to find a game I couldn’t play on Bazzite in the year since I’ve switched from Windows. I know that says something about my gaming preferences, but it is also high praise for the folks who have worked on Wine and Proton over the past years

      • To make it a bit more clear, they are actively blocking access to the game via anti cheat that doesn’t support linux or in many cases, not enabled.

        I have zero issues on arch. I find linux works better out of the box, is more reliable, faster, and doesn’t actively farm your data.

        • 2 hours

          I was initially so mad when they blocked League of Legends on Linux. Then I was grateful 😂