The Videogames Topic

[IvenBach]

Long gone are the days of finishing off a game in 1 sitting. Social life, school, spouse, children and other stuff now takes care of that. Grinding in games is a lot difference for me now having grown older and I have to spread it out if I'm going to. I'm enjoying painting more now anyways as odd as that seems.

[Goblin-King]

But then again, that's also something I miss about a lot of the older games. You could actually beat them in an hour or so.
I sometimes give myself challenges on a game I've already beaten, like do it without dying even once, beat a time or score or find all secrets.
Kids today can't seem to do this if there isn't an achievement involved :-/
But games have evolved and new trends have emerged. And that's fine too. Grinding items in Diablo or Warcraft can be fun too.

Personally I've grown tired of these "infinite" games though, WoW being the core example. There's not really any "getting good" involved, just a never ending grind.
I like my games like I like my movies. It should be great to watch, but enough is enough and it should have an ending. Then after some time you feel like watching it again and reliving the good memories.
With infinity games you either continue where you left off on your unending journey, or you start over fresh and have to grind through a lot of boring content the reach that same place.

[Sjeng]

I sometimes give myself challenges on a game I've already beaten, like do it without dying even once, beat a time or score or find all secrets.

I like doing that myself. One of the reasons I like achievements on Steam. Extra incentive.

Kids today can't seem to do this if there isn't an achievement involved :-/

Errrr... Right.

I play GuildWars 2 atm, and it has a linear storyline you can play, and actually finish. There are branching stories and different races, so you can play it like 100 times all differently, but the main story remains. Beside that, you can do all the things you can do in any MMORPG, like WvW, PvP, lots and lots of sidequests (which in GW2 are a bit different, they have some quests in the form of "hearts" and many living events that happen all over the world all the time in which you can choose to participate should you be in the vicinity). So that's really the only MMO I'm playing atm, plus it has no mothly subscription fee and bi-weekly addons for free. More stuff to do than I could manage.
PS, it's on sale 40% off today, should you want to give it a try. It's worth it. Get the heroic edition. You can always upgrade to the deluxe, which in my opinion isn't worth it. (you can save up ingame gold for an upgrade too by the way).

[chaoticprime]

Older games had brevity of content with accessibility tiered up with the difficulty. You had to keep trying and failing--and learning how to play better, to win. That's why I can run through so many games so quickly, is that by playing so many RPGs I just immediately know what to do in order to win hard.