The quality of games became so bad that I sit in front of the steam shop for an hour almost on a daily basis, scrolling through the catalog without finding anything I want to play...<p>I find myself going back to titles that are over 10 years old over and over again. Every new game I've bought in the recent years I have regretted buying shortly after.<p>Given I am not a story based gamer, but a gameplay focused one, I just see no true innovation anymore. I mostly play Indie games now, but even those are rarely anything special now. Back to Terraria I guess...
>Given I am not a story based gamer, but a gameplay focused one, I just see no true innovation anymore.<p>Denshattack!, ballxpit, blue prince, balatro, outer wilds, pipistrello... There's plenty of quality there too!<p>It's true that the average quality we're exposed to is lower, because there's so many random pet projects and big players take fewer risks. Relying on word of mouth or gaming reviewers you trust is important nowadays. But I'm convinced it's a matter of discovery rather than existence.
See, ballxpit was a perfect example for me, for uninnovative gameplay, as you just shoot balls and the game mostly plays itself for you. I can see why people like it, I guess its just not for me.<p>I know the other ones, but they really do not appeal to me, except for maybe balatro.
Maybe you would like Hardspace Shipbreaker? That's a good game with unusual mechanics. Or maybe Factorio if you enjoy Terraria. Maybe Ark Raiders or Valheim if you like action multiplayer games?<p>I think its easier to discover a game with a good story then a game with novel mechanics, but they exist.
This is crazy to me. The amount of great games under $20 that you can get these days is overwhelming. (But it helps that Roguelikes are my favorite genre - Have recently been playing Diceomancer, Combolands,Plan B, Emberwards,Iron Nest, Against the Storm, to name just a few)<p>Part of getting older is naturally being less interested in new things - be it movies or music. If you find yourself scrolling through Steam not finding anything you like, it could just be a feeling of fulfillment with what you already like?
> The amount of great games under $20 that you can get these days is overwhelming<p>I think that's the problem, there are too many to choose from, where you end up overwhelmed and ends up choosing none.
The average quality of games has always been bad. You probably aren't old enough to remember all the bad games on the Atari 2600.
There's truth to what you're saying, but for some perspective: catalogers identify about 400 games published for the 2600 over its entire lifespan; Steam has about that many new releases <i>every week</i>.<p>That difference in volume, which improvements in AI workflow will keep accelerating, really does point towards personal curation being far more overwhelming than it had been.<p>With the 2600, you and your friends would probably have a ready working memory of pretty much most of the good stuff, most of the awful stuff, and some insight into the publishers and presentation/packaging cues that point one way or another for an unfamiliar title.<p>With Steam, if you want to be able to find very personal idiosyncratic gems, instead of just following social media buzz or AAA PR -- one of the most exciting <i>benefits</i> to today's massive catalog -- you have to wade through an increasingly unfathomable amount of slop.
90% of everything is crap; also Sturgeon might have been an hopeless optimist.
I've never used the Steam for browsing for games to buy. I've only bought stuff there after finding the games some place else (reviews, word-of-mouth). Using it for that has been a terrible experience since the day they opened the floodgates, since there's just too many damn games out there, even ignoring the slop (even without AI, there's still the Unity asset flip to flood the store).<p>Steam can't not have a store front, but it wouldn't matter to me if they removed 95% of it and just reduced it to a search bar with and a list with some basic results to know I'm actually buying the right game (think $Name, $Dev, $Date-of-release, $Probably-some-other-values-to-prevent-obvious-copycats). I'd use it in functionally the same way as I do know, and I wouldn't by any less because of it.<p>I don't want to say you're holding it wrong, but I question your tactics if your goal is to find new games you want to play.
yeah i have same experience but not sure if its just me getting older. the youngest game i play regularly is still 5 years old
> not sure if its just me getting older<p>I think it is mostly temporal filtering (due to rosy retrospection and survivorship bias combined with Sturgeon’s Law) that we all naturally fall into.<p>Most games 5+ years ago were also bad, but you remember the small set that were good and completely forget all the bad, and this builds an impression that games in the past were so much better. The same applies to movies, music, books, etc.<p>Of course, in the age of AI, a lot more (in absolute terms) shovelware content is likely to be made than ever before, so it'll probably hyper-accelerate the impact of this phenomenon.
Might be age and depression for me to be fair. Don't want to talk down on game devs either, a lot of games look good, but ain't for me.