Change is a constant of life. Nothing is unaffected as time moves on, and whether slower reflexes or changes in environment, friendships, or lifestyle explains why, say, competitive shooters start to look less appealing than chilled city builders, the fact is, these things happen, and it might be fun to talk about it!
How have your gaming tastes changed over the years? Which games or genres did you once love, and what's replaced them? Why do you think that is? Are you glad of it, or is there anything about your old preferences that you miss?
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I used to want to play ever game that launched, and would have the hours to do so, but not the funds to buy the games.
And whilst I'm still far from being able to afford every game, I can afford more than I could previously. The issue is now time! With family, work and other commitments it's hard to find 40-60 hours to sink into a single-player title time and time again.
That said, I tend to use games as a social platform to meet with friends when we can't get together IRL and catch up. Usually using the game as the vehicle for that, so it's less important about what the game is and more about the company. Which does mean live-service titles are a bit more of a staple as it gives us an ongoing goal to work towards together which having downtime and the grind to chit chat in between!
Growing up as a kid, I never had access to online games and was content with just a small little Xbox sitting next to the old DLP TV - back when they still had the "Blades" dashboard (Surely there's some others that remember this)
And the very first game that I loaded into that bad boy was Forza Motorsport 2.
Wow. Just wow. My younger self was mesmerized, driving around and around in circles and going backwards on the track back into the other cars merely out of spite after I spun out.
I became a bit of an addict. Every time I got back from school, I was right onto Forza Motorsport, trying to get a better time; I raced lap after lap after lap, dedicated to finding a better path. I was addicted to racing games and nothing would stop me from getting the best hotlap.
But eventually, as we all know, 2007 - 2008 was the golden year of game releases and boy was I absolutely stoked - I had just saved up all my money and was heading down to the local Video EZY (Surely someone else remembers this) to pick up a copy of Halo 3 & Rainbow Six Vegas with my dad. We took the games home, sat down on the couch with our brand new LCD tv and booted it up... Crickey did I suck yet again, but that was the most fun I've ever played. Nothing I can play to this day will ever come close to the amount of fun I had before.
Unfortunately for me, the next year, my brother would pass away in a critical accident and I became a bit of a hermit, playing solely shooter games to relieve myself from the stress. Bang bang, boom boom.... it was all I knew for a massively long time. I had gained a fair bit of weight then too, and my life was going downhill from the massive chunk that was taken out.
I remained this way for a long time, until something came out... something so similar to the Wii, yet unique and different.
The Xbox Kinect.
Now this thing was something else - Kinect sports and the new dashboard? I was thrilled!
I played kinect sports until I almost dropped out of exhaustion, and surprisingly, I managed to get into peak physical condition from all that squatting, jumping and kicking
With this "revolutionary" piece of equipment, I had all the power in my hands - Literally!
This started my kinect phase, where I solely played kinect games, used the kinect to traverse the menus... even Forza Motorsport 4, steering with just my hands! (Look ma! No hands! was an achievement back then)
Eventually, I moved off of that after finding out about the PC. This changed everything up so much - I could do so much more with the PC's keyboard and mouse... and from there, I found the game Settlers and Age of Empires, which started my strategy phase. I just couldn't get enough of the strategy games - Empire Earth, Settlers, AoE, Warcraft (Reign of Chaos was my favourite) - This also paved the way for me to start playing chess competitively before winning a national competition! (Well, I came second tied, but c'mooon, what's one point)
Now, I'm absolutely stuck on 3 games - War Thunder, Lethal Company and iRacing
I guess I've taken a taste of all the flavours out for offer and found my taste - Neapolitan, all of them!
I still play some of the old games for a nostalgic hit, and my Xbox 360 is still purring in perfect condition to this date, with the controller's backing being taped up... but nothing will ever replace those memories and the path of games I followed.
I don't think many of my gaming preferences have changed, but perhaps more of how I go to play them? I've always enjoyed playing lots of FPS titles, survivial, MMO's, and things like that! However, one title that I always use to play was League of Legends and I haven't touched that game for quite a few years, mainly due to it's toxic playing nature. Certainly a game with requires great friendship and teamwork which many lack, but the way those games are built are quite negative relationships. Although the other titles of FPS and survivial, fantasy games I still play, I play a lot more for fun and won't try to let anyone spoil my time. If someone is spoiling my fun I always mute my team or opposing team where I can just focus on my game and how I'm playing. I've definitely moved away from that competitive feel. Don't get me wrong I like to win like all of us do, but it's not the end of the world if we lose a couple.
There's been a huge shift in my gaming preferences since the early '90s. Back in those days, I had a high tolerance for challenging games, where completing a single level could take several days. Now, I've amassed a collection of over 1500 games on Steam, and I confess, I haven't even touched half of them. This abundance of choice has significantly lowered my patience for overly demanding games.
My engagement with competitive games has also diminished over time. I still play them, but far less frequently. Similarly, my approach to MMOs has evolved. A decade and a half ago, I was drawn to the social and organizational aspects of these games. Now, managing and coordinating in games feels too much like my day job (because I do this daily at my work lol), which I'd rather escape from in my gaming time.
It’s interesting how gaming once helped me develop these soft skills, but now as I apply them in real life, I gravitate towards more relaxing games. You're more likely to find me exploring the worlds of "Zelda", "Minecraft", or "Nightingale" rather than managing fleets in "EVE Online" or leading raids in "WoW".
From sneaking some gametime on Mickey mouse Castle of Illusion and Sonic on my dad’s Megadrive when I was maybe 5 or 6 to devoting any free time I have now to Singler player games, my preferences have fluctuated over the console generations.
While I enjoyed playing some games on the Megadrive, my time doing this was very limited as the console was in my parents’ bedroom and I wasn’t allowed to play it unsupervised- probably not trusted not to break it being so young. It was these experiences that helped shape my love of games moving forward though. From the joys of Sonic, to Golden Axe, Mickey Mouse to Desert Strike., I would sneak any opportunity ii could to play.
The N64 was my first console that I had to myself and I spent a LOT of time enjoying classic platformers like Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, Silicon Valley, along with Lylat Wars, the Zelda titles and any football/soccer games I could get my hands on. The thrills of split screen multiplayer on GoldenEye is many a child’s nostalgic memory and I even found myself playing this with friends well into my late teens in boozy stop-overs. I loved the N64 and in my opnion many of the Nintendo games shaped the future of console gaming, with mario64 still being an accessible and brilliant title today.
When the era of the PS2 and Xbox came along, my love for single player experiences continued with a wealth of amazing titles, funded by my dad secretly buying them for me without my mum knowing. The gaming world changed then when Xbox 360 made an appearance at Christmas and this was when I played basically everything online with friends. We would all finish school, get home and play Rainbox Six Vegas for hours on end or have FIFA sessions at one of our houses, with weekend sleepovers consisting of FIFA tournaments until the early hours. This online trend continued with CoD MW1+2 but then I found I started to get bored of the repetition of the games themselves. Even though the social aspect was as much a draw to these games as the titles themselves, I slowly started playing these less and less and moved to more single player FPS games and narrative driven titles for enjoyment.
This pattern of play has continued since. I’m now in my 30s and the thought of playing online is really off-putting, even the likes of EAFC online or Call of Duty multiplayer have very little appeal and I now choose a single player story experience over those kind of games. I enjoy big releases along the lines of Like a Dragon, TLoU, Assassins Creed and Spider-Man but also smaller, Indie experiences like Dave the Diver, Cocoon, Pacific Drive, Dredge. Any time I have to myself now involves getting engrossed in these titles. Although I will admit that with working full time and having young children, free time is less prevalent and some of the longer RPGs take a long time to get through, especially as I appreciate a fun Platinum trophy chase.
I cant imaging myself ever moving back to online/multiplayer gaming but definitely think more VR will work its way into my time and I don’t ever plan to stop gaming!
I wouldn't say my gaming tastes have "changed" in a sense of I've dropped certain games/genres, but moreso my tastes have expanded. As a child I was HOOKED on collectathons and platformers, I loved being able to jump around and pick up loads of shiny things until all the numbers were maxed. It gave child me an unparalleled happiness. I STILL like playing those kinds of games to this day, sometimes something simple and colourful feels so cosy to unwind to and those kinds of games have become my comfort games in my adult years. The nostalgia alone gives me serotonin but getting that satisfying 100% is the cherry on top.
I used to avoid games that focused on "human" characters in "realistic" settings, my child-brain found them boring and I didn't want to follow along with all of this dialogue and dramatic scenes when I could just jump around various platforms and pick up random objects for no reason. If there was a simple story, I'd follow along but it wasn't a crucial feature for me. However, as time went on I ventured into some RPG's which are VERY story heavy but they still had a lot of exploration and collecting, which I still thoroughly enjoyed and as I got older, I found following stories and learning those more complex mechanics/strategies a lot easier to do. I'd say RPG's like Final Fantasy were the bridge between the colourful platformers of child me's interest and the girtty action-adventure games that I love now. I'd learnt how to appreciate a good story with immersive voiceacting and now some of my favourite games are games I probably would've never gone near as a kid. My gaming library is just incredibly expansive with over 20yrs of content from all sorts of genres to explore and enjoy. That's the best way I can summarise it.
Growing up, disregarding all those free/cheap platforms for kids that came bundled with yoghurt packs or whatever, I mainly grew up on strategy/simulation games. Some of my first proper games I was enthralled by were the Age of Empires series, Company of Heroes, etc. Plus I also spent too many hours on things like SimCity, Cities XL series, The Sims, and even those Facebook sim games like Farmville, Cityville, and Cafe World. Anything involving management, customisation, and more, I was all over. Being able to create something and call it my own, and also create something bigger than the sum of its parts was all that I was about for a long time, which is why I also fell in love with Minecraft many years later. A lot of that hasn't changed, but my priorities certainly have. While I still love strategy games, I play stuff like Age of Empires, Company of Heroes, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, and more, very rarely now, as I'm mostly busy with other projects. Besides the thing that I realised is that I love those games where I can really fully immerse myself in or just go all-out on customisation and being as involved and in-world as possible.
One of my favourite things in the AoE games was just the editor, playing around and making these super detailed custom scenarios (or as much as I knew how to use those tools at the time), same with Minecraft, the second I got it, I was all-in on trying to make my own custom maps or servers. For the very same reason I make online content, I liked games where I can make something for others to play or otherwise use, however growing up I just had that reality check that these are projects no one will care about or that I'm just not skilled enough for a lot of them to see the light of day. Now, I'm a lot more open to games that don't feature any kind of opportunities for making custom content, with RPGs specifically like Cyberpunk or The Witcher 3 now taking up more of my time than ever.
The other main genre for me growing up were racing games, mostly the Underground series and GT4. I very much learned that I don't really like all racing games, just one specific racing franchise, that being Need for Speed (and Gran Turismo to an extent but I only played 4), and to this day, despite adoring racing gameplay, I only play NFS games, even bought a proper wheel and pedal set just for that.
I used to be obsessed with any life sim/farming sim game. I still like them but I think I've let myself branch out a little into first-person shooter games. I used to find them a little intimidating because of how boys talked about them in school hahah. My gf is slowly but surely introducing me to Halo.. I'm actually a lot better at it then I expected!
I dont know if my taste has changed but the reason i play has and thats pushed me to try new genres.
I obviously played (and still play) games fun but in the last 4-5 years I have always been on the look out for stress free games with little to no fail state. My recent chill games atm are Dorfromantic and mudrunner, both are very different but are easy to get to grips with and do not enduce any stress.
I still like and play the same kind of games I have always enjoyed but some days I just need to decompress and really relax and those kind of games help alot.
My gaming preferences have changed more due to having kids more than my tastes changing. I used to be into massive RPG's like Baldur's gate and Final Fantasy games but since having children I have a lot less time so starting these games is more daunting as I generally have 1-2 hours a day to play and enjoy games. I was playing divinity 2 recently but sometimes that small amount of gameplay was just all talking and felt wasted. So now I stick mostly to action games and PUBG.
They've definitely changed I can tell you that much.
As you can guess by my name, I really only used to play older stuff, partly because I loved it and partly because I couldn't afford newer gen consoles for a long time, even with a discount from working at Game briefly in the early 2000s.
The love of platformers and retro aesthetic is still there but thanks to streaming I've hugely broadened my pool of games and genres. Things like Sea of Stars getting me into turn based, Prodeus and Metal Hellsinger into FPS, Dark Souls - the game series I swore I'd never play because I didn't want to punish myself and now I can't get enough of it!
I think a big part of that as well is the communities that come with trying new games, particularly as a content creator, I've met some great people purely from playing games outside of my comfort zone.
As a kid I didn't have access to consoles apart from a fake Sega Mega Drive with one level of Super Mario and some no-name games on it, and our family PC still had MSDOS on it, so I mostly played Alley Cat and Tetris. Even later when I got my first PC with Windows 98 on it, the games I had were pirate copies as games were either not available in my country or we didn't have money to buy them. So I had a few Star Wars games but that was all. (plus staying over at the neighbours instead of sleeping or studying to play Final Fantasy...)
The huge change was when a friend showed me Lineage II (I was already at uni). I spent all my spare money on game time cards and to pay for a decent internet connection at home so I could play with my friends. Ever since I'm hooked on MMOrpgs and for a long time haven't really played much else, it was my way to meet friends who lived far away and I wasn't allowed to travel to see them.
I do miss games though like Tetris and Mahjong, was thinking I should play them sometimes, but then I tried the Mahjong mini-game in FFXIV and it is confusing and not at all like the Mahjong I had ages ago, which makes me wonder was it even real Mahjong I had or same fake? XD
I started with a Super Nitendo -> Playstation -> PC “Diablo 2”
I done some professional Counter:Strike Source stuff ( jeah not 1.6)
Somehow from back this time until now i have the feeling which some games just struggle with
No good grind
Horrible Graphics (Remember Crysis?)
Good Story telling
I remember playing Call of Duty and it felt like an action movie.
I miss this….a lot getting lost in the world and time is running like sand through your hands.
Under the line my Standard is gone very high for a AAA Game, but i honor indi which give me back the feeling for short term of time. Time will come :)
I was a long time casual competitive gamer, only firing up games like COD and APEX legends exclusively. any thing else just seemed fatiguing. i was buying games such as cyber punk but with no desire to play them..
It changed when i was evicted from the main living room due to a reshuffle into the back room with the Playstation. With no direct LAN connection i had wireless connection only. Which is completely unacceptable for competitive gaming. So i forced my self back into single player. Over time i now feel the opposite, i'm enjoying single player far more. I do still play online but COOP like Baldur's gate 3 and helldivers where a pristine connection is not needed.
my gaming taste has definitely changed a lot over the years. I started out playing games like Resident Evil and Tomb raider with my mom. Then I moved onto story driven games such as Gta and Red dead, then ofc I went to the shooter games, which I miss so much. I miss being able to dominate in cod. Y’all I was so good idk what happened to me LOL I think I’ve just lost motivation as I’ve gotten older. I tend to go for more chill, laid back games now. Some examples would be no man’s sky ofc , grounded and I’ve been rocking on fortnite festival 😭 I really hope I can find motivation to get better again at fps games and battle royale games. I used to have so much fun on them when I was actually good at it
