Originally posted by Grimno:

I mean looking back at old games I loved them because that's all there was
The market was small, you had like 3 MMOs you choose from and that was it.

But looking back at them I realized how many of them actually sucked but I didn't care

Like Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 sucked.
It got better with the expansion but after playing through the Diablo 2 Remaster version I realized the game really did suck.
It wasn't difficult, it wasn't unique, the levels were just big open areas with the same cramped dungeons. Different theme per Act but still the same design.
And then the longevity was just doing it all again on Nightmare and then Hell difficulty.
And the endgame? Grinding for loot to kill the bosses you're currently grinding for loot, but faster.

Originally posted by Buckshot:

Originally posted by Grimno:

I mean looking back at old games I loved them because that's all there was
The market was small, you had like 3 MMOs you choose from and that was it.

But looking back at them I realized how many of them actually sucked but I didn't care

Like Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 sucked.
It got better with the expansion but after playing through the Diablo 2 Remaster version I realized the game really did suck.
It wasn't difficult, it wasn't unique, the levels were just big open areas with the same cramped dungeons. Different theme per Act but still the same design.
And then the longevity was just doing it all again on Nightmare and then Hell difficulty.
And the endgame? Grinding for loot to kill the bosses you're currently grinding for loot, but faster.

Fair take. A lot of those old games were jank if you strip the nostalgia away. But they had charm because nobody was focus-testing fun out of them. You played through bugs and grind because it felt like discovery, not a checklist.”

Originally posted by salamander:

sorry to hear. hope you can either recapture what originally made the hobby special for you or find another hobby that does give you those same feelings.

Originally posted by HOLY_RHIN0:

I put 20 years on diablo 2 and lod. Its yalls opinion the game sucked, doesnt suck to me. More people playing Diablo 2 remaster everyday then newer AAA titles. If your burned out on gaming find a new hobby man. Try fishing, or hunting or hiking or lifting weights and exercising or just go to the park and look at the sky, work on your car or truck, make a project vehicle. Plenty of other stuff to do in life, and plenty of games to check out. No way you have played every single game ever made. Try a different category of games you never played before. Example. I only enjoyed mil Sim games for awhile. Never liked space stuff. Then I tried elite dangerous and now im a space fan boy its my favorite game now and I dont even care to play any of my mil Sim stuff anymore. Good luck to finding something to entertain you. :goldenclock:

Originally posted by HOLY_RHIN0:

I found something for the op to do. Sense he is bored. You have almost 3000 hours in american truck simulator. And you dont even have half the in-game achievements, maybe try to perfect your favorite game? Its pretty clear that's your number one. I mastered that game awhile ago and haven't even put 1500 hours on it yet. You can also try making your own models or paint liveries for that game and share your work with the community. Good luck! Plus, soon they should finish the rest of the usa soon so you wont even need any map mods anymore other the pro mods canada.

Originally posted by Buckshot:

Been gaming for forty years… and I think I’m finally bored of the industry and its throwaway attitude.
Who else is experiencing industry fatigue?
Ever notice how you can play ten games of the “same” type and each one nails a different thing—but never the whole package? One has great physics, another has solid crafting, another nails AI or world design. You find yourself thinking, “If they just took *this* feature from Game A, *that* mechanic from Game B, and the depth from Game C, we’d finally have something incredible.” But instead, we keep getting ten half-finished ideas instead of one complete experience. It’s like every studio is so obsessed with being “unique” that they ignore what already works.
This isn’t about PC or console.
It’s not that I hate consoles—I’ve owned and loved them all. From Atari to Commodore 64, to Nintendo and Sega. My PS4, 360, and Xbox One still sit on the shelf like old friends I never visit anymore—not because they’re bad, but because the PCs I’ve built since 2016 simply do it all better. When your rig’s ten times more powerful and can run everything they can (and more), it’s hard to justify firing up a console. My Xbox One X probably has three hours on it, tops.
And before anyone says I’m flexing gear — I’m not. I build these rigs because I love the craft, not because I’m chasing frames. Across three systems, I’ve easily got around twenty grand tied up in hardware — everything from Project Zero builds and liquid-cooled 4080s to ultra-wide displays and Corsair setups. Full simulator builds too — flight-sim rigs with yokes, pedals, multi-monitor cockpits, and full trucking setups with working dashboards, gauges, and controls. It’s not about the money; it’s proof that no matter how much you invest, it doesn’t fix the real problem. The industry itself is the bottleneck, not the player.
I’ll never stop being a gamer—forty years in and still going—but the truth is the industry’s in the dumpster. Games used to be made for longevity. You bought one title and it lasted you for years. Skyrim, Fallout, Oblivion, Red Dead… those worlds had depth, replay value, and heart. You didn’t need ten DLCs or a battle pass to stay hooked.
Now it’s all the same formula: quick release, flashy graphics, make a pile of cash, move on to the next one. Most studios don’t build worlds anymore—they build content schedules. Nobody’s making classics anymore—just updates, seasons, and roadmaps. Everything’s about microtransactions, early access, and “live-service” nonsense. No time for quality or soul—just churn and burn.
And the worst part? It’s all *regurgitated.*
How many PvP games do we need? How many battle royales? Here’s a wild idea—what about zombies? That hasn’t been done to death yet, right? Everything feels like a clone of something else that was a clone of something before that.
Even when they give you creative tools, it’s never true freedom. Take Battlefield 2042’s and now Battlefield 6’s Portal modes—you think, “Cool, I can build my own experience, run bots, and just have fun.” But nope. They throttle you. You get XP restricted, progression locked, and can’t even earn the same rewards unless you play PvP. So much for player choice. You can’t even enjoy a game on your own terms without being punished for not feeding the algorithm. Sorry, but if you paid the same price as everyone else, you should be able to play the damn game however you want without being punished for it.
And before anyone jumps in with “Well, Battlefield is a PvP game”—yeah, no kidding. That’s not the point. If you include a Portal mode to appeal to PvE or creative players, then don’t lock progression behind it. You can’t claim to support all types of gamers and then cripple the experience for half of them. It’s false advertising dressed up as “player choice.”
And even when the industry makes a sequel, half the features fans loved in the last one never make it back in. How is that listening to your player base?
Also, what happened to actually *owning* a game you purchased?
I liked having a physical copy, a serial key, a manual. You don’t own anything anymore. Get locked out of your account, or a platform shuts down, and there goes your so-called collection.
And it doesn’t matter what you play on—console or PC—it’s all the same story now: hollow, over-marketed filler. Even with god-tier hardware, the games themselves are shallow. The industry stopped chasing art and started chasing algorithms.
We get eye candy in graphics (if it’s even optimized—most aren’t these days) just to distract us from how crappy the games actually are.
We’ve been programmed into a TikTok three-second attention-span society, and the studios know it. That’s why they keep spitting out quick dopamine hits like Warzone and Fortnite—run, spawn, die, get a kill, repeat. It’s not depth anymore; it’s just a fix.
GTA 6 is my last real hope, but with Rockstar under Take-Two, I’m not holding my breath. The talk about real-money integration and monetized in-game banking hasn’t been confirmed, but with Take-Two’s track record, it wouldn’t surprise me. They already turned GTA Online into a cash machine—you can bet they’ll double down.
Doesn’t matter if you’ve got the latest console or a $5,000 PC—we’re all just beta testers for whatever monetization scheme they cook up next. The days of getting lost in a world and playing for the joy of it are gone. Now it’s all about profit margins and metrics.
Try going back to the early-2000s titles we loved; half of them won’t even run unless you build an old PC or dust off a console from that era. I’ve got hundreds of games from that time I’d love to revisit—can’t play most of them on modern hardware.
And when something *does* come along that actually ticks a lot of boxes for fans—something ambitious with depth and potential—what happens? The devs abandon it. Take Atlas, for example: huge world, survival systems, naval combat, exploration, player freedom—it could’ve been incredible. Instead, it was left unoptimized, half-broken, and forgotten. The community stuck around longer than the developers did. That’s become the pattern now: promise big, patch a little, then walk away.
Or look at Skull & Bones. Development hell since around 2016, rebooted a half-dozen times, hyped as the next great pirate experience that would capture the magic of Black Flag. What we got instead was a cutscene-riddled, microtransaction-loaded live-service shell of what could’ve been. Ubisoft even called it a “quadruple-A” game, charged full price, and within a few weeks it was already being discounted across stores. Less than a year later, you can pick it up for pocket change. That’s where we are now—massive budgets, endless delays, and no soul.
All that being said, I still game whenever I can.
But half the time I just sit there staring at my 500-plus game catalog on Steam—and that’s just Steam—not counting Epic, Ubisoft, EA, and every other launcher you need because nothing’s physical anymore. It’s all digital junk.
Some nights I spend more time scrolling through titles, humming and thinking about what might actually be worth playing—or what I haven’t already sunk hundreds of hours into—than I do actually playing anything.
I used to count down the days to a new release. Now I count how fast it’ll get patched, nerfed, or forgotten.
We didn’t change—the industry did.
Somewhere along the way, gaming stopped being an escape and became a subscription.
And you know why they’ll never make the perfect game?
Because there’s no money in longevity. The cash is in the quick fix—the next sequel, the next skin pack, the next “season.” A perfect game would end the cycle. It would satisfy people for too long.
And that’s bad for business.
That’s why we’ll never get the game that truly checks every box.
Rant over.