Having brought this up in another thread I thought I'd post a thread of my own. Basically, it's my belief that as an older gamer (40 years old) having played games since the mid-1980's, I tend to approach games differently to younger gamers. All three of my kids love games but seem to appreciate games for different reasons to me - they've been brought up on high polygon counts and impressive physics engines, which they tend to take for granted. Having started off with a ZX81 in 1984 I seem to approach games from a different angle. Any other iOS gamers found the same thing?
On iOS? Too many to mention; everything from small games like Jetpack Joyride, doodle jump and tiny wings through retro games like the hookchamp series, through to bigger games like Dead Space, Final Fantasy 3, MC2...the list goes on. On other platforms? I loved text based adventures in the 1980's, then Nintendo games like Super Mario and Zelda - more recently my favourite games have been Half Life 2, Fallout 3 and Bioshock - which I would love to see appear on iOS! Ken Levine I hope you're listening...
That's pretty much it universally in this industry. I'm an older gamer, and notice many of today's games which visually are a knock out, go under a knife with the younger set (I'm talking pre-teen to 20-something). I read comments like "the worst graphics" and "look at that crappy resolution" and I'm scratching my head thinking are they seeing why I see? This is what attracts me to the iPad -- the monster-sized selection allows me to choose games similar to what I grew up with, and plenty of indy titles that stray off the beaten path. I had some of my cousin's teenage kids over one day - pulled out MAME on my PC and cycled through hundreds of games. All they kept saying was "that cool, you got anything else"? I finally switched inputs to the 360, threw up a game from last year called DarkSiders, and they were transfixed the rest of the day.
I like Deadlock:Online, Vertex Blaster, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Nova 2, MC2, Minotron and Time Crisis 2nd Strike to name a few. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is a good one the first time around. One of the best TPSs out there on iOS.
I'm in my 30's and I feel the same way. My 15 year old nephew, who I often talk about games with, makes me scratch my head at times. Like the time I showed him Devil May Cry (one of his favorite console games of all time) on my wife's iPod. All he could comment on were how stripped down the game was and how crappy it looked graphically. While I do agree Capcom could have done a better job with the iOS version, I still tried to explain to him the limitations of the hardware when the game was released, and why it doesn't look as good as it would have on, say, a PSP. I don't think he really got it, though. I think kids simply take quality of things for granted, and become critical of things when they don't meet their expectations. It's not just games, it can be anything. I remember as a kid, the B-52s where one of my favorite groups. When I saw them perform on Saturday Night Live (which was the first time I ever heard any music that I was familiar with being performed live), I was shocked and disappointed at how different they sounded live versus on tape (yeah, cassettes, not CD, haha). I just didn't have a clue of the differences between live music and studio recorded music. I think that kind of naivety can account for a lot of why kids tear apart perfectly awesome productions of any kind. And, just to throw it out there, As a 30-something guy, my favorite iOS games are easily Sword & Sworcery, Jetpack Joyride, Infinity Blade (even though I can't bring myself to grind it out to infinity...), and Dragonvale.
A lot of today's gamers are what I would call graphics whores. If the game has not got the latest game engine it's not worth playing. I'm 37 and first started playing games on the spectrum 48k (1985 ish I think). The great thing I like about iOS are the Indy games developers and that graphics do not make a great game. Also the price point means I can try a great number of different games and not feel out of pocket unlike for instance with a PS3 game, with three kids I can afford to buy more games unlike again PS3 & Wii. Another great thing is also the release of the Icade for IPad, which has some truly amazing games supporting it. My favourite games are many including Galaxy on Fire 2, Classic Doom, Warblade Hd, Space Inversion Hd, Megaworm, Hungrymaster and Real Racing 2.
I am 40 and my son is 17 we do like a lot of the same games. However, I do know enough that my son is not going to think system shock 2 is one of the greatest games of all time, he would spend the whole time saying ughh look at the graphics. Personally, I am not into the whole retro thing that a lot of ios games have going on, but I do understand the appeal. I just think a lot of them get a pass for simply being retro, but the core game play is crap. I also think a lot of classics are best left as that, "classics". The games simply don't hold up anymore, as they rely on old conventions that weren't even fun the first time around, but we overlooked them because that was all we had. On the other hand a lot of new games get a pass for just having shiny things yet they are so dumbed down, I am bored in 5 minutes. Not naming any games, but I think a very recent review on the front page nailed it on the head. Pretty things are nice to look at but give us an engaging game to play. If you can't do both, then please just drop the graphics and focus on the game.
One of my other favourites on iOS is GTA Chinatown Wars - which was the closest iOS has ever got to the GTA experience IMHO. I've seen a lot of negative comments about it because it isn't in 3D and next-gen graphics - but what people didn't seem to realise is that if you created a fully 3D open world gta game on iOS it wouldn't work because so many things would have to be lost. Chinatown wars is superb as all the detail of a living, breathing city is there; all the details that make GTA games what they are, and it was also a nod to the first GTA games that were top-down. I'm not sure whether its an age thing but a lot of people just complained because it wasn't the 3D they expected from console versions.
I agree. What the AppStore allows me to do is to try out a lot of different games which are affordable and not too time consuming. Like you I've got 3 kids and I work full time, but with iOS games I can continue my interest in gaming without it affecting real life. I still play the occasional bigger games on my xbox360 but most of my gaming now is on iOS - it's easier to find time to play on my iPod touch and it doesnt cost the earth. By the way - not sure whether it's coincidence or an age thing, but I've seen more intelligent replies to this thread than I've seen for a while on Toucharcade. Thanks!
I'm 44 and I agree wholeheartedly with the OP (BTW the ZX-81 was also my first home computer). But I think it goes beyond graphics. For one, I didn't hold a dual-shock controller in my hands till I was well into my 30's, and I'm very much not not convinced that it represents some kind of ideal control device. I grew up playing with old fashioned joysticks and, more often, on a mouse and keyboard. This may be a reason why I find touchscreen controls (even virtual ones) to be a perfectly acceptable way to play a game. In fact, I find it much easier to aim in a game like Shadowgun than in Deus Ex: Human Revolutions (seriously). I think older gamers also have different expectations as to what qualifies as a "complete" gaming experience. These days it's not enough for a game to have a compelling single player campaign: it has to have achievements, online multiplayer, mini games, unlockable costumes, leaderboards, and so on. The games I grew up with didn't need any if that stuff to be fun (I also walked 10 miles to school, uphill both ways ).
Gamers from older generations are used to look beneath the sheen and polish, and truly see a game for what it is, gameplay-wise, like a finely tuned BS-detector. With more recent titles, once you look under the covers, often you will find an appetizer that leaves you hungry, or a mess of a buffet that doesn't feel right.
So far I've seen mainly 30-40 year olds comment so I though I'd chip in. I generally do not like to state my age* on forums or anywhere else online because most 16-19 year olds I've seen online(and some offline)are a disgrace to the age group in the way they conduct themselves. Anyway, on to the topic. I've seen quite a but of similarities in the games that you guys have mentioned here and the games I like. I think you may be right in some ways about how we look at some of the games, but to be honest I do love me some good old style games, notably sword of fargoal and the hook champ series. I've known quite a few teens not liking those games all because of the graphics and it not being a fps. Now there are some games that I haven't liked as much as, say, my dad. Those games include 9 innings baseball (didn't enjoy it much despite my being a baseball fanatic[go Tigers!]) and giana sisters. That's one thing that is so nice about the AppStore, it really is made for all age groups. *I'm 17, and have been in college for about a year. Just to let you know that my maturity level is higher than most in my age group.
Do you consider yourself more open-minded than your similarly-aged comrades? Do you know other teens who are open to more abstract visuals? I think it's cool that you enjoy those titles are others like it, but I'm not sure how big a demographic of similar interest there is in your age group.
Yea, I'm more open-minded. And I don't know but maybe 1 or 2 teens that are similar. I do know a few 20-25 year olds that like the older style games. I know a bunch more COD nerds though. I have always thought myself to be different from other teens in how I look at games, for example I'm not that into Call of Duty type of games, or games like fallout etc.. Although I will probably be getting Battlefield 3, battlefield games are an exception
Nice to hear from someone younger - thanks! Of course there are gamers like you who are younger but have a much more 'mature' outlook on gaming. I work in a hospital providing play (including videogames) for kids up to 16. Whereas I've found that probably 90% of them play on games a lot but never really think about or appreciate what they're playing, a few of them are like you and have a much deeper appreciation of games and the ability to discuss and think about the games they're playing intelligently. Which gives me hope...
Thanks, and yes I know I'm not the only one as I've seen some mature 16-19 year olds here on TA (rare though). I'm enjoying the thread quite a bit. There are more 30+ year olds here than I thought, I like it.
Thanks. One of my first experiences of gaming was spending 2-3 hours on my ZX81 patiently typing in pages and pages of Basic programming from my 'Personal Computer Weekly' magazine. You'd finish typing it in, type in 'run' and the damned thing would have an 'i/o error at line 1356' or something and you'd have to go through it all again. And then when it worked the 'game' would only involve slowly moving a collection of pixels around the screen to a 'blip, blip' sound.Certainly gives you a different outlook on gaming. The above should be prefaced by 'when I was a lad' and spoken in a North Yorkshire accent! Lol...
