Coffee Talk #334: How Have You Changed as a Gamer?

I used to play a ton of sports games. Somewhere along the line, my sports gaming tapered off. These days, it’s such a small percentage of my yearly gaming.

Welcome to Coffee Talk! Let’s start off the day by discussing whatever is on your (nerd chic) mind. Every morning I’ll kick off a discussion and I’m counting on you to participate in it. If you’re not feelin’ my topic, feel free to start a chat with your fellow readers and see where it takes you. Whether you’re talking about videogames, the Yankees sucking at Fenway, my favorite American Idol 2011 contestant sleeping with Nikki Reed, or Liam Neeson getting cut from The Hangover 2, Coffee Talk is the place to do it.

I used to play a ton of sports games. In grade school, my friends and I devoured pretty much every NES, SNES, and Genesis sports game. My brother and I have a longtime rivalry in NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. My friend Justin and I played entire baseball seasons against each other in World Series Baseball and Frank Thomas’ Big Hurt Baseball for Saturn. Somewhere along the line, my sports gaming tapered off. These days, it’s such a tiny percentage of my yearly gaming.

So what caused such a drastic change in my gaming habits? Part of it was that I started writing about games for a living. While I enjoyed sports games, I always worked with someone that was way more into them than I was. Part of it was that as sports games became more realistic, they became less fun for me. Lastly, the vast majority of people I clicked with in the videogame journalist world were not sports gamers, so we never played together.

For some reason, this change in my gaming habits popped into my head over the weekend. I never really thought about it before. How have you changed as a gamer over the years? Are your gaming tastes the same as they were 10 or 15 years ago? Or are they drastically different? Kindly share your ch-ch-ch-changes as a gamer as you watch the David Bowie video below.

Author: RPadTV

https://rpad.tv

38 thoughts on “Coffee Talk #334: How Have You Changed as a Gamer?”

  1. Oddly I was thinking about this on Saturday. I'm trying desperately to get into ME2 and play through it. Younger me would have done this. Younger me also wouldn't have just let the game sit in the machine for a week w/o touching it.

    I think it is coming to the point in games with big stories that I have been there and done that. I will always love those types of games but my drive to complete them has certainly diminished. Perhaps this only plagues my age group since I have been playing games before Kindergarten. I really have no interest in hack n slash only games now. I enjoyed both Ninja Gaidens and Bayonetta…I could not finish them. No knock on them since the issue lies with me.

    Then again, I find myself becoming less and less excited about impending launches. In the day of $60 games, a lot of them are not worth the full price. There are maybe 6 games I have purchased for the Xbox and PS3 that are worth full price (UC1&2, B:AA, Bioshock, Gears2, MGS4) and only one game for the Wii worth $50.

    On a console I am gravitating more towards an easy going FPS experience to play with friends as opposed to the immersive type of game. I use my PC for those types now.

  2. I ponder this every now and then because they games I used to play and games I play today are nothing alike. Back in the NES to N64 days I played mostly platformers and the occasional RPG when I could get my hands on them. Today it is all RPG and FPSs as I can't stand most platformers any more. After three to four gens of platformers being the most common games, I grew very tired of them. I'm sure one day I will look back and think how nuts I was to play so many FPS, I may be getting close to there already lol. At least RPGs never get old and co-op games are getting more common. (I <3 co-op)

  3. I like to say that I've "outgrown plumbers and hedgehogs" as a way of saying that I don't really play most of the more cartoony platformers I used to love. I get why games like that are fun for others, but I tend to prefer a more realistic setting and look. The Ratchet and Clank games are an exception to this rule as I still love to play those games, but they have a special kind of spark to them that I just don't find in many other games of their ilk anymore.

  4. from age 9-12 I mainly played star wars games, from 13-16 I only really played halo and sports games, 17-present I turned into a hardcore gamer who plays everything but rts and turned based rpgs. I guess growing up changes the type of gamer you are

  5. I no longer play sports games and I feel that recently my tastes are drawn towards games that would be classified as over the top. Games like Bulletstorm, Pure, and Split/Second get my blood flowing.

    On the other hand I have been regressing and playing PS1 games because of the awesome graphics and "simplicity" of older games.

    (My friend/co worker just gave me GTA 2, Nascar 2000, Gameday 99,Smackdown!, and Freestyle Motocross McGrath vs Pastrana).

  6. From the looks of it I might be one of the only people here who hasn't changed as much with my gaming. I still play FPS since the first memory I have of playing video games was literally (arguably) the first FPS, and I still play Pokemon. The big difference with that is I don't feel like I'm too old to keep playing those games or anything, I no longer care about some of the looks I get when I tell people I still play Pokemon. It's also a little different for me because I haven't had a current gen. console until I got my DS and xbox 360—so being up to date with the current games is pretty different for me too.

    What I find it harder to do that I used to play is RTS games like Age of Empires, or do something like spend a month of evenings finding everything in Legend of Zelda both times to beat the game completely.

  7. I play much less platformers than I used to since I made the switch from my DS to my PSP. I play more RPGs now than I used to, and the variety is pretty impressive; from the fighting-style Dissida RPG, the futuristic RPG Phantasy Star, and the RPG shooter Valkyria Chronicles II, my library has expanded beyond my FF Tactics Advance and Tactics Advance 2 games for GBA and DS. I used to play Sonic and Mario games on my DS, then I went into Phantom Hourglass, but my portable games have slowly became more RPG-errific.

    My console games have started morphing from my Mario platformers and racing games to the shooters and casual games, since I still have a Wii. Besides Okami and Super Mario Galaxy 2, my platforming titles have started vanishing from my consoles as well.

  8. anybody have any recommendations about the best android phone (or any phone in general) at Verizon right now for a decent price? Not looking for anything brand new at $400, definitely something more affordable than that, $200 at most but definitely less. I'm looking at finally getting a new phone before the unlimited plans at Verizon disappear—although I really have no clue what I want, I just need a new phone since mine is almost 3 years old and the entire front screen doesnt work anymore.

    1. @bsu

      my friend bought the new galaxy s phone that comes with Inception pre-installed. it was pretty kool to me and pretty smooth.

    2. The Thunderbolt is mostly great and it's $249. Keep in mind that it comes with a 32GB MicroSD card. Most competing phones come with 8GB, some with 16GB.

      1. I was looking at that one or the Droid X. However my fiance has really been bugging me about want an iPhone, so I might get that and then we would switch phones and I would wait for something better to come out later. A 32GB MicroSD card is a pretty nice feature though, makes it a little more tempting.

      2. Droid X is really nice, but it's a wee bit old. As smartguy said, the Thunderbolt is LTE, so you get killer speeds. It also has a better CPU, GPU, screen, etc. than the Droid X. Most importantly, it has a kickstand!!!

      3. The Thunderbolt does look much better based on specs than the Droid X, and I would like a reason to not get that (I know too many people who have it now and I don't like to have the same phone as people around me), but I do like the Droid X's price. Who knows though maybe I will just end up taking my fiance's phone and letting her get the iPhone she's been wanting for forever.

    3. @BSU

      Go Thunderbolt and don't look back. Good hardware, and it's LTE. That stuff is rolling out fast if you don't have it already so don't worry. It's also the same rate as EVDO.

      As soon as I land my next job I'm buying the Thunderbolt or if Samsung has something LTE out at the time I'll check them out.

      I'm a huge Apple fan but think HTC puts out a nice product.

      1. Yeah I knew you have liked some of HTC's stuff before, the Thunderbolt seemed like it was better than the Droid X which I was also looking at.

        Out of ignorance of the technical side of phones, what do you mean by its the same rate as EVDO?

      3. LTE = 4G

        EVDO = 3G

        $30 for unlimited for LTE which will fall back to EVDO.

        I really think you'd experience buyer's remorse with the X. I've used one and think it's a nice device but the newer model is around the corner. I think the Samsung Galaxy S is a better option if you want to compare similar hardware in terms of age.

        Perhaps Amazon or BB has a promotion to bring it right to $200 or cheaper? I think $250 is just right but it will get cheaper at some point before the end of summer. VZ might be going up on the price of entry for LTE while keeping new 3G at the $200 price point.

  9. @tokz_21 Did you catch the Morales fight? Everyone (including me) thought that Maidana was going to annihilate him. He put up an excellent fight. He lost the decision, but it was really close.

    1. @rpad

      I was in that group that thought el terrible would lose. I would love to see a rematch where morales has both eyes to work with but i know maidana will take the rematch more seriously. It has fight of the year written all over it. I wouldve been happy with a draw cuz to me maidana didnt do anything to win that match.

      2. I'd take ur 6 to 5 with 1 even round over 7 to 5. Morales would get more credit from me for boxing with one eye for the entire match.

      3. Sure, but boxing with an injured eye doesn't give you bonus points. At best, it falls under the criteria of ring generalship, which is the category official judges ignore the most out of three specified by the Association of Boxing Commissions.

      4. Oh im not saying he deserved bonus points but he did demonstrate ring generalship and a real good technique to survive 34 mins with someone who many thought would destroy him by the 6th round.

  10. Totally forgot that I have a comped Netflix account. Haven't logged into my account in 7+ years. Have no idea where my old discs are. Streaming is working. Hopefully they don't shut down my free account….

    1. Great article. You know, at one point I was on the fence about the PSP, but after reading the first part about the PSP system updates, I'm sure glad as hell I didn't get it.

      The second part to me is downright unethical. If a developer puts content on a disk, but you have to pay extra for a code to unlock it after you've paid full retail for the game, then something is very, very wrong. This is the ONLY reason why I haven't played Mass Effect (1&2) yet. I like to buy my games used, and I'll be damned if I have to pay extra for something that will alter the game experience that is already on the disk! Also, sometimes, I like to play games offline. If there is mandatory online connectivity, it may gimp the game.

      I've never played a game that has an unskippable trailer for another game, thank Jehovah. That sounds like a really annoying move in trying to make video games more like movies.

      The fourth point I've just experienced with Splinter Cell: Conviction. UbiSoft has their own online service called "U-Play" and I had to create an account in order to get some "goodies", but the whole friggin' affair took to damn long and was really starting to irritate me that I pretty much said; "Screw your goodies, UbiSoft", I just want to play the damn game without the SC-R30 laser-sight scope and Epsilon 3 cameo threads. I end up not signing up for the U-Play service altogether and I still enjoyed the whole game. Go figure.

      That last part reminds me that I really need to get back into PC gaming. I think I'm getting a bit burned out with the consoles already.

      -M

  14. Bad news everyone. I was let go of my job today. I'll try to still post here and there but if im MIA for awhile you know why. Its been a crazy couple of weeks for the tokz. :(

      1. Thanks BB. It does i was saving up to buy tix to go see the cubbies play in boston next month too!

      1. Thanks BSU. I hope so too. Finding a job while ur unemployed blows cuz no one will consider u.

      2. Yeah I can imagine that would be difficult. I know how that goes a little bit though, most places aren't even looking at my resume because I'm a student. Job hunting is probably one of the most frustrating things I think.

      3. @rpad

        thanks for trying to give me a little pick me up but seems like a small consolation compared to the events i've had a couple of weeks.

        @BSU

        it is because resume writing is so hard for me but i really dont want to pay for anyone to write it too. At least the office manager said i could still put myself as working there until i find a job. a small victory for me today.

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