It wasn’t all that long ago that I would schedule a week’s vacation when E3 was going on. I’d watch all the press conferences and then hours and hours of coverage from various gaming sites or Twitch or whatever. I couldn’t wait to learn about all the upcoming games!
I’m not sure if it is me that has changed, gaming that has changed, or most likely, a bit of both. Tonight was Gamescom Opening Night Live, a 2 hour long stream with a 30 minute pre-show. I didn’t watch it live since I was working and when I did watch it, it took me about an hour to get through it. I basically watched it with the remote in my hand and my thumb over the fast-forward button. (Yes I watch all my YouTube content on a big-screen TV…another example of how old and out of touch I am!)
It kind of makes me sad, though I’m not sure why. I think because I feel like age plays into it, and maybe to some extent it does? But there are so many popular genres that I am COMPLETELY disinterested in these days. Without really stopping to think hard about it, here’s a list:
Fighting Games
Souls-Like Games (both due to the difficulty and to their propensity for being very grotesque)
Military Shooter Games
Platformers
Multiplayer Games, particularly PvP MP games.
Horror Games
What does that even leave? Action adventures, RPGs and indie games, I guess?
So yeah, there wasn’t a lot in the show that got me all that excited, or alternatively there were games like Starfield that I know I’ll play and really don’t need to watch more previews of because it’d be nice if there was some aspect of it not spoiled by the time I can actually play.
I also, frankly, don’t buy many games these days. I have the backlog of games I really want to play (as mentioned in my last post) and “free” games on Xbox Game Pass and Playstation Plus. More titles than I have time to play, honestly. I don’t really need to get hyped for whatever is coming out in the next six months. I’ll play those games after they launched and enjoyed a few rounds of patches and some price cuts.
I guess the only reason I’m even blogging about this is because it all kind of came as a surprise. I was looking forward to ONL, but by the time I got through the pre-show with Kyle Bosman (what does that dude even do the 363 days of the year when he isn’t doing a deliberately awkward pre-show for Keighley?) I was already getting antsy and ready to move on to doing something else.
Oh well, flying through it like I did freed up time to write this post and for playing games, which is what I’m gonna go do now. I just found the “rogue-lite” mode in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla!
I hope most folks who tuned in enjoyed the show, though! Every party has its pooper though, and generally that is me!
“What does that even leave? Action adventures, RPGs and indie games, I guess?”
Yeah, but that’s still a lot, isn’t it? I found this post quite ironic, given the post I didn’t write this morning (Because I just *had* to write about Nimona.) was going to revolve around the absolutely overwhelming amount of new games/expansions that have come out this month and how I’ve given up even bothering to try to keep up. I mean, the new GW2 expansion is out today and I haven’t even bought that because I know I don’t have time to play it.
That said, these big reveal shows rarely tell me about anything that interests me, either, or if they do, I already know about it from somewhere else. I can’t see the point of them as information so if they’re also failing as entertainment then what are they for?
Yup, when it comes down to sit down and play something, it does still leave a lot and I have more stuff I want to play than I have time to play. And for all my bitching I DID still watch about an hour’s worth of trailers and such.
But it’s like the stuff that interests me currently doesn’t seem to warrant very much inclusion in these big dog and pony shows that we see. For instance that Dawnlands game you’ve been enjoying really intrigues me but you won’t see something like that on a show like Opening Night Live because, I guess, it isn’t mainstream enough?
Which I guess, now that I think about it, just circles back around to something that has always been true. I get better “recommendations” from other players than I ever do from the big media outlets.
I appreciate that your list of games that don’t interest you and mine are almost exactly the same.
I think the difference with Gamescom vs something like E3 or The Game Awards is there was nothing premiered here. Sure, there was a bit a new info about upcoming games we already knew about. However I’ve pretty much already know what games interest me and I don’t need to watch trailer #5 about it.
I get that Gamescom is big in Europe, and fits into a late summer time slot. But personally I don’t think it is all that interesting for most people outside of Kieghly being there.
“However I’ve pretty much already know what games interest me and I don’t need to watch trailer #5 about it.”
Yeah that’s really it, in a nutshell. And if we got any/many release dates I wasn’t paying enough attention to remember them.