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This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit playing them after a few hours or even

This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit playing them after a few hours or even minutes. Too much stress and surface experiences has had me looking in the other direction. Take, for example, GTA 5. I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Just hours and hours of riding during rain or sunshine, dawn or dusk, in the city or the most remote mountains. It's beautiful and serene and made me realize that I don't really need dozens of hours of frantic gameplay. But as amazing as those experiences are, they aren't the core focus of GTA5 and that's a missed opportunity. I am ready for video games with these beautiful moments - and please keep them short! I don't want to spend hours and hours on a game anymore, at least not traditional ones - but I have no idea where to find them.

Datsundere 10y ago
I don't like playing single player games at all because I can't get into the story. I'm always down for multiplayer games from MMOs to MOBAs to FPS probably because it's competitive and just more fun in general since I'm not competing against AI but real human beings.
- the_af 10y ago
  Interesting. Note however there are storyless (or minimal story) single player games, and also single player games without an AI. No/minimal story: puzzle games, abstract games, board games, sandbox/exploration. No AI: adventures.
apozem 10y ago
This is exactly how I felt about Red Dead Redemption. Years after beating the game, I couldn't tell you much about any individual mission. I do remember staring at the in-game sunset as it cast shadows across the open prairie and thinking, "Wow."
- mercer 10y ago
  I was about to recommend RDR, because I feel the same way about it. I intentionally avoid taking the 'fast way' to places and ride my horse everywhere. I gather herbs, hunt, take on side-quests, or just enjoy the ride. It's very zen.
  - Sophistifunk 10y ago
    ...until you finally collect that last blue flower, and get eaten by a mountain lion :D
- prefect42 10y ago
  On a similar note, Zork I had a textual description of a sunset (being a text adventure) that, for whatever reason, I found massively peaceful.
fao_ 10y ago
This was actually one of the reasons I loved No Man's Sky. I will spend some time finding a nice planet, and then I will just hike to and fro places. Sometimes it's very much like walking through some of Roger Dean's work, and can feel nice and peaceful.
psyc 10y ago
Rockstar makes great sandboxes, and I mostly play them that way as well. I do the missions very grudgingly, and mostly just to see the cut scenes.
newshacker47 10y ago
I was surprised how much I got into the "walking simulator" Dear Esther. It just had beautiful art direction and sort of semi-random nonsensical voice over that gave it a bit of atmosphere. It turns a lot of people off for being pretentious and having zero gameplay, but I still really enjoyed it just to ogle the scenery. It was only about an hour long.
rickdale 10y ago
For me a big part of games being boring is the lack of cheats and codes that come with the game. Developers/Game companies have decided HOW they want me to play the game and that irks the crap out of me. Take for example GTA5, I can only turn on invincibility for 5 minutes without having to reapply the code. What is the point of the limit? Can't I define the way I'd like to play the game? Sometimes cheating is fun and can be creative. Cheat codes could make a game like Assassin's Creed playable to those that just don't like the repetitiveness.
- mxfh 10y ago
  The sense of achievement just fades off with age. For a lot of games equal time sunk with progress(, without going all in on the fun of grinding, thats something different for me), most games mechanics just start to feel like the artificial speed bumps they are, only meant to stretch or distract from a hopefully existing story and setting. Game progress of story-heavy offline games should be unlockable at will without importing save games. Or there should be some kind of an AI play mode, where you only take over that autopilot if you seem interested or just like to watch. For most linear games with an actual story a youtube replay, including fast forwards, will be as good as the thing itself. This might as well explain a part of the let's play success.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  It doesn't even have to be considered "cheat codes" if adequately factored into the difficulty level. I feel like some of the backlash against old school cheat codes (all the games we used to play in "god mode" or with things like the Game Genie) is as much the terminology "cheat code" and the idea that it is "hacking" or "breaking" the game. Most games seem to stick to some simple linear variation of a difficulty model: Easy, Medium, Hard, ... Why aren't there more options? Why aren't there more custom options? For many games, why is "easy" have to be so "hard" as a baseline. If I want to play a game as a 100% power trip, why not let me?
  - ren01r 10y ago
    I recently started playing Saints Row 4. In the casual mode, its an easy game with an overpowered protagonist. It's really relaxing when a game gives every weapon in the beginning and let us choose the way to use them.
emp_zealoth 10y ago
Simple - don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles) because 99% of those is rehashed garbage and cliches Buy gamess from small studios, made by a few people or even one guy, usually a lot of them are in Steam Early Access (yes, it is risky, some of them get abandoned or just never improve much) For me this is like a reneissance in gaming. Have a look at Factorio, Starbound, Rimworld, Banished, Pillars of Eternity, SotS:The Pit, ARK:Survival Evolved, 7 Days to Die, Hearthlands. Some of those have multiplayer and are something else completely to play with a few friends A whole lot of people don't even know there is entire world besides CoD or 50th fucking Asassins Creed... I also play Dota 2 on and off, since multiplayer interactions in it are so intense and so unpredictable
- hood_syntax 10y ago
  > don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles) Yep, that's a good rule to live by. There are a lot of great games out there if you put in the effort to look into them (and know where to look)
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    And I think that's the biggest problem: The entry-games that we present are mostly boring shooters, and the like. Non-gamers aren't going to spend time figuring out what kind of game they want, aside from friends recommending something, they'll probably just try what is popular or advertised. I think movies have this same problem. Your weekly superhero blockbuster's are fun, they definitely aren't everyone's cup of tea. But if you weren't ever really into movies, and started jumping in, you'd think that's all there was.
- dota 10y ago
  I also play Dota 2 on and off, since multiplayer interactions in it are so intense and so unpredictable It's a shame to see how AAA companies have butchered the Dota-like genre. There's Valve's Dota 2 which is the shining example of what the genre should be and then there's all these garbage rehashes out there that have just tried to dumb down the game or introduce some kind of gimmick or cliche. AAA games are just a race to the bottom in terms of design. They just try to appeal to the lowest common denominator and games get more shallow and casual with each iteration.
falcolas 10y ago
The sandbox style of game is your ticket to bliss then. Wandering through London in Assassin's Creed Unity. Climbing mountains in Skyrim. Traversing the landscape with a grapple/parachute in Just Cause. Plundering the high seas in Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Exploring Mordor in Shadows of Mordor. Driving through the city and countryside in Need for Speed. Flying the endless black in Elite Dangerous. There are frequently scripted introductory sequences to familiarize you with the mechanics and attempt to hook you with a story, but they will consume your time but once, and can provide you with hundreds of hours of entertainment and escape thereafter. Of course, if driving is your thing, there are a ton of racing simulators out there, from F1 to rally cars.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  This list is incomplete if you don't include Minecraft, the canonical sandbox game. Play in creative or in peaceful mode, and you don't have to do any fighting at all (though some resources are still best collected from mobs). Other categories of nonviolent or non-FPS games would be puzzle games like Tetris or Candy Crush. Also, video games can reproduce or make single-player versions of the classic board, card, and dice games like chess or yahtzee.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    > the canonical sandbox game is GTA, really.
    - peterashford 10y ago
      I would have said Elite, which predates GTA by, what? A decade? And pretty much created the concept of a sandbox game
- trobertson 10y ago
  It's funny that every single game you mentioned is a "theme park" open world game, and exactly zero of them are "sandbox" open world games.
BeetleB 10y ago
Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but try playing The Walking Dead. Not very demanding on time, and it's not about killing zombies. Very story oriented, and you get attached to the characters in the game. I myself abandoned games over a decade ago - they just required too much from me. Only recently I decided to check some games out from the library. Not sure why I picked this one to play and was very pleasantly surprised.
- arkitaip 10y ago
  I really liked The Walking Dead even though I'm not a huge fan of QTEs.
cyxxon 10y ago
Interestingly enough, this is one of the reasons I still play World of Warcraft: I used to be pretty hardcore (never Realm Firsts or anything, but hard mode raiding during BC/WotLK), and thus invested into my main characters... but recently I much more enjoy leveling, questing, pet battles, and all these little things. I basically play it like a single player game and enjoy the scenery. I just can't bring myself to enjoy other new games like I used to, I have a huge library of unplayed or minimally played Steam games, because I will just play WoW anyway...
- taneq 10y ago
  My wife and I have been playing Guild Wars 2 in roughly the same way. I used to raid in vanilla WoW, she ran an Everquest raid guild. These days we just mess around in GW2 doing dailies or personal storylines. It's ultra casual, usually pretty easy, but it's fun to drop into for an hour or two.
ConceptJunkie 10y ago
You raise a good point. I would never purchase a GTA game because I find the whole concept morally offensive, but I am very intrigued by the exploration aspect you have described. I would love to see more focus on exploration in games. A lot of RPGs (like the Elder Scrolls series) have significant aspects of exploration to them, but tend to get bogged down in the fetch-it quests or lots of repetitive hack-and-slay. I've got nothing against combat elements of games, but if it falls into endless repetition and involves lots of grinding, etc, to advance, then it just becomes work, not fun.
- talmand 10y ago
  GTA5 is the kind of game that the adventures the player takes on says more about the player than the game itself. Sure, you can run around causing mass chaos and deaths; but you can also do none of those things. Once you reach a point in the game, I forget how far into it, you choose what to do. Want to drive around town obeying the laws and enjoy the sites? Do that. Want to partake in multiple instances of non-violent side missions such as racing, skydiving, and more? Do that. Want to stand at the boardwalk on the beach and watch people walk by while enjoying the setting sun? Do that. Want to take flying lessons? Do that. How about some tennis or golf? Do that. At one point in the game you can even do yoga for crap's sake. There are actually several examples of exploration-type tasks that you seem to be interested in as well. There's a great deal more to GTA5 than the violence you hear about from people, that only focus on that one topic, that have a narrative and rhetoric to push on people for their own agendas. Still have negative opinions towards GTA5 because of moral reasons? That's cool too. But consider you may be missing out on tons of stuff you would actually enjoy because you might dismiss it immediately for reasons.
  - thwarted 10y ago
    It's the extent of the different styles of game play, and the kinds of things you can get out of it, is a huge advantage to these kinds of games. When I got bored with GTA5's regular mission based mechanics, had finished all the missions, I spent just as much time getting two characters in a car and driving back and forth as fast as possible between the furthest auto body repair shops on the map just to see how long I could last before the car blew up. From "My 4-Year-Old son plays Grand Theft Auto": At this point my son was familiar with the game’s mechanics and hopped into the ambulance. As he put the crime fighting behind him, he wondered out loud if it were possible to take people to the hospital. I instructed him to press R3, and he was off to save a few lives. He was having a blast racing from point to point, picking up people in need, and then speeding off to Las Venturas Hospital. During one of his life-saving adventures, he passed a fire house with a big, red, shiny fire truck parked out front. He didn’t want to let his passengers down, so he took them to the hospital and then asked if I could guide him back to the fire truck. http://venturebeat.com/community/2010/06/05/my-four-year-old-son-plays-grand-theft-auto/ http://venturebeat.com/community/2010/06/05/my-four-year-old...
Nadya 10y ago
>Take, for example, GTA 5. I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Just hours and hours of riding during rain or sunshine, dawn or dusk, in the city or the most remote mountains. It's beautiful and serene and made me realize that I don't really need dozens of hours of frantic gameplay. You sound like you'd love the mostly open-world, graphic-centric (MMO)RPG genre! Something like Black Desert Online or FF14 Online. Where you can optionally focus on the story here or there and are mostly free to explore the world (although areas that outlevel you may be a bit dangerous...) [0] http://i.imgur.com/oV4smNW.png [1] http://i.imgur.com/XqGjx5e.jpg [2] http://i.imgur.com/lpJ272N.jpg [3] http://i.imgur.com/1w9yCy2.jpg [4] http://i.imgur.com/QCRQLIP.jpg
stcredzero 10y ago
This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit...I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Most of the time, games are structured by people whose viewpoint and incentives are radically different from the players. In the short term, the industry doesn't "care" if you play because you're bored and there's no real choice (for AAA levels of production effort) and because that's what your friends are doing, and there's a little variable schedule of reward that's gotten its hooks into you. The most memorable times I had in Eve Online were entirely through emergent gameplay. I and my fellow alliance players in 0.0 security space couldn't give a rat's ass about anything the content team generated -- except as a source of resources in our own player-generated drama of building a player owned station. The emergent stuff is what really engages the mind. That's the real "play" that's going on in games -- not the publishing company's interest in keeping us paying a subscription. That stuff was 100X more engaging than anything some content team could dream up. I find there's a whole subset of gamers today who remind me of the college students who would come up to you at the beginning of a course, and ask if you'd play their "college game" with them -- You tell them exactly what to spit back out during exams, they memorize that list, they get their grades, they satisfy their requirement, and no one has to actually care or be engaged or actually learn anything. Those students remind me of a lot of gamers. It's not about finding fun, genuinely engaging, unexpected gameplay. It's about getting expectations met, and getting the stuff they're entitled to. I got fed up, and I've decided to do something about it. I'm self-funding and making my own MMO, and I'm going to do my best to have it be about emergent play. I'm very far from being able to tackle those issues, but I have a server cluster that can spawn any of the 2^87 star systems, and support 70 players in the same multiplayer battle. All but one of those 2^87 star systems are identical at this point, however. But that's the next thing on my list. No RPG progression yet, but we'll get there. I want to make an MMO that's specifically built for smart people, where no one gets nerfed, no one grinds, and devs never give any sympathy to forum whiners. http://www.emergencevector.com http://www.emergencevector.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3DPalL7p5w&list=PLnAL8xf0QQaD0bN5tCGnvh7Qq_kpFZznO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3DPalL7p5w&list=PLnAL8xf0QQ... (I'm planning a game that you'd have to spend hours and hours on, overall, but I'm going to try and structure it so you can play in half-hour, hour, or two hour sessions.)
deleted 10y ago
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noonespecial 10y ago
Couldn't agree more. I still even get nostalgic about the "places" in the original Doom. Something about just hanging out there being amazed that my computer could even do that. Damn I want my holo-deck. What's taking so long?
dvtv75 10y ago
This is what I came here to say. I only have Vice City, nowhere near as visually spectacular, but I get myself a car and just drive around with the radio on. It's the same for Assassin's Creed through to IV, I often just go for a walk and look at the scenery, immerse myself in a time and place that's long gone. Often enough, the missions get in the way.
- foobarian 10y ago
  I occasionally load up Black Flag to sail a 16th century ship and listen to pirate songs. It makes it fascinating to think about what the Caribbean were like back then...
- filereaper 10y ago
  I do the same in GTA V. I think its feeling of freedom and escapism is why games like No Man's Sky were appealing. I used to clock hundreds of hours on Flight Sim 98, not necessarily learning how to fly (though that was fun too) but going to various cities in Flight Sim, checking them out in Encarta and doubling back to Flight Sim again. Now that I'm older and financially capable of visiting these places, its pretty surreal. I hope the new AR/VR movement brings about these kind of experiences.
glaberficken 10y ago
Try "The Witness".
- ngokevin 10y ago
  Or Firewatch.
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    Firewatch is a really big step in the right direction. But try playing it as a child or a woman marginally interested in a gaming experience and you get unnecessary swearing and tropes from a man's perspective. Oh well. I wish there was possibility for a mode. Not one you are forced to select, but one based on a profile, more akin to the predictive one advertisers already have on you.
    - eropple 10y ago
      A "possibility for a mode" dilutes the artistic message of a game. If you don't like what the authors did, I would suggest doing something that presents a different viewpoint that you find valuable. (And that's not a cop-out--there are loads of indie developers doing exactly that, and a lot of those games are awesome.)
      - cloudjacker 10y ago
        I understand that, and this understanding has been pervasive for 30 years, which is why this exact article was written, and is still being circulated on HN. Dare.
    - namaemuta 10y ago
      Are you implying that women don't swear? and why does a child have to play this game? this game is obviously oriented to a mature audience. Not all the games have to be suitable for everybody. If not, the only games available would be pixar-like games.
mastazi 10y ago
> I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Sounds like you would enjoy Euro Truck Simulator 2 or American Truck Simulator. Yes you still have a mission (taking a trailer from point A to point B) but you can choose from a long list of "jobs" that will take you to many different cities, and you even have the option to free roam.
- filereaper 10y ago
  Heh, spent hundreds of hours on Flight Simulator doing just this, reading up on Encarta about beautiful cities, and then paying a 'virtual' visit in Flight Sim.
  - mastazi 10y ago
    Yes, simulators are strangely compelling despite being seemingly "boring" at first sight. If you are interested in the genre, you can follow Squirrel on Youtube, I especially like his "trucking diaries" but there are flight sim videos as well: https://www.youtube.com/user/DaSquirrelsNuts https://www.youtube.com/user/DaSquirrelsNuts
egypturnash 10y ago
Have you tried No Man's Sky? Once you get the initial couple of hours of "game" out of the way, there is pretty much absolutely nothing to do except hop from star to star, land on planets, and wander around them looking at the prettiness. I sunk hours into it. I wish the PS4 version had a cheat I could enter to completely turn off the "survival" mechanism and the HUD so I could just put it up on my projector, find a nice view, and have a living painting on my wall.
Shorel 10y ago
Seems to me you will love Euro Truck Simulator 2.

Datsundere 10y ago

I don't like playing single player games at all because I can't get into the story. I'm always down for multiplayer games from MMOs to MOBAs to FPS probably because it's competitive and just more fun in general since I'm not competing against AI but real human beings.

the_af 10y ago
Interesting. Note however there are storyless (or minimal story) single player games, and also single player games without an AI. No/minimal story: puzzle games, abstract games, board games, sandbox/exploration. No AI: adventures.

apozem 10y ago

This is exactly how I felt about Red Dead Redemption. Years after beating the game, I couldn't tell you much about any individual mission. I do remember staring at the in-game sunset as it cast shadows across the open prairie and thinking, "Wow."

mercer 10y ago
I was about to recommend RDR, because I feel the same way about it. I intentionally avoid taking the 'fast way' to places and ride my horse everywhere. I gather herbs, hunt, take on side-quests, or just enjoy the ride. It's very zen.
- Sophistifunk 10y ago
  ...until you finally collect that last blue flower, and get eaten by a mountain lion :D
prefect42 10y ago
On a similar note, Zork I had a textual description of a sunset (being a text adventure) that, for whatever reason, I found massively peaceful.

fao_ 10y ago

This was actually one of the reasons I loved No Man's Sky. I will spend some time finding a nice planet, and then I will just hike to and fro places. Sometimes it's very much like walking through some of Roger Dean's work, and can feel nice and peaceful.

psyc 10y ago

Rockstar makes great sandboxes, and I mostly play them that way as well. I do the missions very grudgingly, and mostly just to see the cut scenes.

newshacker47 10y ago

I was surprised how much I got into the "walking simulator" Dear Esther. It just had beautiful art direction and sort of semi-random nonsensical voice over that gave it a bit of atmosphere. It turns a lot of people off for being pretentious and having zero gameplay, but I still really enjoyed it just to ogle the scenery. It was only about an hour long.

rickdale 10y ago

For me a big part of games being boring is the lack of cheats and codes that come with the game. Developers/Game companies have decided HOW they want me to play the game and that irks the crap out of me. Take for example GTA5, I can only turn on invincibility for 5 minutes without having to reapply the code. What is the point of the limit? Can't I define the way I'd like to play the game? Sometimes cheating is fun and can be creative. Cheat codes could make a game like Assassin's Creed playable to those that just don't like the repetitiveness.

mxfh 10y ago
The sense of achievement just fades off with age. For a lot of games equal time sunk with progress(, without going all in on the fun of grinding, thats something different for me), most games mechanics just start to feel like the artificial speed bumps they are, only meant to stretch or distract from a hopefully existing story and setting. Game progress of story-heavy offline games should be unlockable at will without importing save games. Or there should be some kind of an AI play mode, where you only take over that autopilot if you seem interested or just like to watch. For most linear games with an actual story a youtube replay, including fast forwards, will be as good as the thing itself. This might as well explain a part of the let's play success.
WorldMaker 10y ago
It doesn't even have to be considered "cheat codes" if adequately factored into the difficulty level. I feel like some of the backlash against old school cheat codes (all the games we used to play in "god mode" or with things like the Game Genie) is as much the terminology "cheat code" and the idea that it is "hacking" or "breaking" the game. Most games seem to stick to some simple linear variation of a difficulty model: Easy, Medium, Hard, ... Why aren't there more options? Why aren't there more custom options? For many games, why is "easy" have to be so "hard" as a baseline. If I want to play a game as a 100% power trip, why not let me?
- ren01r 10y ago
  I recently started playing Saints Row 4. In the casual mode, its an easy game with an overpowered protagonist. It's really relaxing when a game gives every weapon in the beginning and let us choose the way to use them.

emp_zealoth 10y ago

Simple - don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles) because 99% of those is rehashed garbage and cliches Buy gamess from small studios, made by a few people or even one guy, usually a lot of them are in Steam Early Access (yes, it is risky, some of them get abandoned or just never improve much) For me this is like a reneissance in gaming. Have a look at Factorio, Starbound, Rimworld, Banished, Pillars of Eternity, SotS:The Pit, ARK:Survival Evolved, 7 Days to Die, Hearthlands. Some of those have multiplayer and are something else completely to play with a few friends A whole lot of people don't even know there is entire world besides CoD or 50th fucking Asassins Creed... I also play Dota 2 on and off, since multiplayer interactions in it are so intense and so unpredictable

hood_syntax 10y ago
> don't buy AAA (apart from very few select titles) Yep, that's a good rule to live by. There are a lot of great games out there if you put in the effort to look into them (and know where to look)
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  And I think that's the biggest problem: The entry-games that we present are mostly boring shooters, and the like. Non-gamers aren't going to spend time figuring out what kind of game they want, aside from friends recommending something, they'll probably just try what is popular or advertised. I think movies have this same problem. Your weekly superhero blockbuster's are fun, they definitely aren't everyone's cup of tea. But if you weren't ever really into movies, and started jumping in, you'd think that's all there was.
dota 10y ago
I also play Dota 2 on and off, since multiplayer interactions in it are so intense and so unpredictable It's a shame to see how AAA companies have butchered the Dota-like genre. There's Valve's Dota 2 which is the shining example of what the genre should be and then there's all these garbage rehashes out there that have just tried to dumb down the game or introduce some kind of gimmick or cliche. AAA games are just a race to the bottom in terms of design. They just try to appeal to the lowest common denominator and games get more shallow and casual with each iteration.

falcolas 10y ago

The sandbox style of game is your ticket to bliss then. Wandering through London in Assassin's Creed Unity. Climbing mountains in Skyrim. Traversing the landscape with a grapple/parachute in Just Cause. Plundering the high seas in Assassin's Creed Black Flag. Exploring Mordor in Shadows of Mordor. Driving through the city and countryside in Need for Speed. Flying the endless black in Elite Dangerous. There are frequently scripted introductory sequences to familiarize you with the mechanics and attempt to hook you with a story, but they will consume your time but once, and can provide you with hundreds of hours of entertainment and escape thereafter. Of course, if driving is your thing, there are a ton of racing simulators out there, from F1 to rally cars.

LeifCarrotson 10y ago
This list is incomplete if you don't include Minecraft, the canonical sandbox game. Play in creative or in peaceful mode, and you don't have to do any fighting at all (though some resources are still best collected from mobs). Other categories of nonviolent or non-FPS games would be puzzle games like Tetris or Candy Crush. Also, video games can reproduce or make single-player versions of the classic board, card, and dice games like chess or yahtzee.
- serge2k 10y ago
  > the canonical sandbox game is GTA, really.
  - peterashford 10y ago
    I would have said Elite, which predates GTA by, what? A decade? And pretty much created the concept of a sandbox game
trobertson 10y ago
It's funny that every single game you mentioned is a "theme park" open world game, and exactly zero of them are "sandbox" open world games.

BeetleB 10y ago

Might not be exactly what you're looking for, but try playing The Walking Dead. Not very demanding on time, and it's not about killing zombies. Very story oriented, and you get attached to the characters in the game. I myself abandoned games over a decade ago - they just required too much from me. Only recently I decided to check some games out from the library. Not sure why I picked this one to play and was very pleasantly surprised.

arkitaip 10y ago
I really liked The Walking Dead even though I'm not a huge fan of QTEs.

cyxxon 10y ago

Interestingly enough, this is one of the reasons I still play World of Warcraft: I used to be pretty hardcore (never Realm Firsts or anything, but hard mode raiding during BC/WotLK), and thus invested into my main characters... but recently I much more enjoy leveling, questing, pet battles, and all these little things. I basically play it like a single player game and enjoy the scenery. I just can't bring myself to enjoy other new games like I used to, I have a huge library of unplayed or minimally played Steam games, because I will just play WoW anyway...

taneq 10y ago
My wife and I have been playing Guild Wars 2 in roughly the same way. I used to raid in vanilla WoW, she ran an Everquest raid guild. These days we just mess around in GW2 doing dailies or personal storylines. It's ultra casual, usually pretty easy, but it's fun to drop into for an hour or two.

ConceptJunkie 10y ago

You raise a good point. I would never purchase a GTA game because I find the whole concept morally offensive, but I am very intrigued by the exploration aspect you have described. I would love to see more focus on exploration in games. A lot of RPGs (like the Elder Scrolls series) have significant aspects of exploration to them, but tend to get bogged down in the fetch-it quests or lots of repetitive hack-and-slay. I've got nothing against combat elements of games, but if it falls into endless repetition and involves lots of grinding, etc, to advance, then it just becomes work, not fun.

talmand 10y ago
GTA5 is the kind of game that the adventures the player takes on says more about the player than the game itself. Sure, you can run around causing mass chaos and deaths; but you can also do none of those things. Once you reach a point in the game, I forget how far into it, you choose what to do. Want to drive around town obeying the laws and enjoy the sites? Do that. Want to partake in multiple instances of non-violent side missions such as racing, skydiving, and more? Do that. Want to stand at the boardwalk on the beach and watch people walk by while enjoying the setting sun? Do that. Want to take flying lessons? Do that. How about some tennis or golf? Do that. At one point in the game you can even do yoga for crap's sake. There are actually several examples of exploration-type tasks that you seem to be interested in as well. There's a great deal more to GTA5 than the violence you hear about from people, that only focus on that one topic, that have a narrative and rhetoric to push on people for their own agendas. Still have negative opinions towards GTA5 because of moral reasons? That's cool too. But consider you may be missing out on tons of stuff you would actually enjoy because you might dismiss it immediately for reasons.
- thwarted 10y ago
  It's the extent of the different styles of game play, and the kinds of things you can get out of it, is a huge advantage to these kinds of games. When I got bored with GTA5's regular mission based mechanics, had finished all the missions, I spent just as much time getting two characters in a car and driving back and forth as fast as possible between the furthest auto body repair shops on the map just to see how long I could last before the car blew up. From "My 4-Year-Old son plays Grand Theft Auto": At this point my son was familiar with the game’s mechanics and hopped into the ambulance. As he put the crime fighting behind him, he wondered out loud if it were possible to take people to the hospital. I instructed him to press R3, and he was off to save a few lives. He was having a blast racing from point to point, picking up people in need, and then speeding off to Las Venturas Hospital. During one of his life-saving adventures, he passed a fire house with a big, red, shiny fire truck parked out front. He didn’t want to let his passengers down, so he took them to the hospital and then asked if I could guide him back to the fire truck. http://venturebeat.com/community/2010/06/05/my-four-year-old-son-plays-grand-theft-auto/ http://venturebeat.com/community/2010/06/05/my-four-year-old...

Nadya 10y ago

>Take, for example, GTA 5. I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Just hours and hours of riding during rain or sunshine, dawn or dusk, in the city or the most remote mountains. It's beautiful and serene and made me realize that I don't really need dozens of hours of frantic gameplay. You sound like you'd love the mostly open-world, graphic-centric (MMO)RPG genre! Something like Black Desert Online or FF14 Online. Where you can optionally focus on the story here or there and are mostly free to explore the world (although areas that outlevel you may be a bit dangerous...) [0] http://i.imgur.com/oV4smNW.png [1] http://i.imgur.com/XqGjx5e.jpg [2] http://i.imgur.com/lpJ272N.jpg [3] http://i.imgur.com/1w9yCy2.jpg [4] http://i.imgur.com/QCRQLIP.jpg

stcredzero 10y ago

This captures a lot of what I've been feeling lately. I can't stand most games, they just make me anxious and I will quit...I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Most of the time, games are structured by people whose viewpoint and incentives are radically different from the players. In the short term, the industry doesn't "care" if you play because you're bored and there's no real choice (for AAA levels of production effort) and because that's what your friends are doing, and there's a little variable schedule of reward that's gotten its hooks into you. The most memorable times I had in Eve Online were entirely through emergent gameplay. I and my fellow alliance players in 0.0 security space couldn't give a rat's ass about anything the content team generated -- except as a source of resources in our own player-generated drama of building a player owned station. The emergent stuff is what really engages the mind. That's the real "play" that's going on in games -- not the publishing company's interest in keeping us paying a subscription. That stuff was 100X more engaging than anything some content team could dream up. I find there's a whole subset of gamers today who remind me of the college students who would come up to you at the beginning of a course, and ask if you'd play their "college game" with them -- You tell them exactly what to spit back out during exams, they memorize that list, they get their grades, they satisfy their requirement, and no one has to actually care or be engaged or actually learn anything. Those students remind me of a lot of gamers. It's not about finding fun, genuinely engaging, unexpected gameplay. It's about getting expectations met, and getting the stuff they're entitled to. I got fed up, and I've decided to do something about it. I'm self-funding and making my own MMO, and I'm going to do my best to have it be about emergent play. I'm very far from being able to tackle those issues, but I have a server cluster that can spawn any of the 2^87 star systems, and support 70 players in the same multiplayer battle. All but one of those 2^87 star systems are identical at this point, however. But that's the next thing on my list. No RPG progression yet, but we'll get there. I want to make an MMO that's specifically built for smart people, where no one gets nerfed, no one grinds, and devs never give any sympathy to forum whiners. http://www.emergencevector.com http://www.emergencevector.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3DPalL7p5w&list=PLnAL8xf0QQaD0bN5tCGnvh7Qq_kpFZznO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3DPalL7p5w&list=PLnAL8xf0QQ... (I'm planning a game that you'd have to spend hours and hours on, overall, but I'm going to try and structure it so you can play in half-hour, hour, or two hour sessions.)

deleted 10y ago

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noonespecial 10y ago

Couldn't agree more. I still even get nostalgic about the "places" in the original Doom. Something about just hanging out there being amazed that my computer could even do that. Damn I want my holo-deck. What's taking so long?

dvtv75 10y ago

This is what I came here to say. I only have Vice City, nowhere near as visually spectacular, but I get myself a car and just drive around with the radio on. It's the same for Assassin's Creed through to IV, I often just go for a walk and look at the scenery, immerse myself in a time and place that's long gone. Often enough, the missions get in the way.

foobarian 10y ago
I occasionally load up Black Flag to sail a 16th century ship and listen to pirate songs. It makes it fascinating to think about what the Caribbean were like back then...
filereaper 10y ago
I do the same in GTA V. I think its feeling of freedom and escapism is why games like No Man's Sky were appealing. I used to clock hundreds of hours on Flight Sim 98, not necessarily learning how to fly (though that was fun too) but going to various cities in Flight Sim, checking them out in Encarta and doubling back to Flight Sim again. Now that I'm older and financially capable of visiting these places, its pretty surreal. I hope the new AR/VR movement brings about these kind of experiences.

glaberficken 10y ago

Try "The Witness".

ngokevin 10y ago
Or Firewatch.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  Firewatch is a really big step in the right direction. But try playing it as a child or a woman marginally interested in a gaming experience and you get unnecessary swearing and tropes from a man's perspective. Oh well. I wish there was possibility for a mode. Not one you are forced to select, but one based on a profile, more akin to the predictive one advertisers already have on you.
  - eropple 10y ago
    A "possibility for a mode" dilutes the artistic message of a game. If you don't like what the authors did, I would suggest doing something that presents a different viewpoint that you find valuable. (And that's not a cop-out--there are loads of indie developers doing exactly that, and a lot of those games are awesome.)
    - cloudjacker 10y ago
      I understand that, and this understanding has been pervasive for 30 years, which is why this exact article was written, and is still being circulated on HN. Dare.
  - namaemuta 10y ago
    Are you implying that women don't swear? and why does a child have to play this game? this game is obviously oriented to a mature audience. Not all the games have to be suitable for everybody. If not, the only games available would be pixar-like games.

mastazi 10y ago

> I've probably spent more hours riding cars and bikes in GTA5's beautiful countryside and outback than playing actual missions. Sounds like you would enjoy Euro Truck Simulator 2 or American Truck Simulator. Yes you still have a mission (taking a trailer from point A to point B) but you can choose from a long list of "jobs" that will take you to many different cities, and you even have the option to free roam.

filereaper 10y ago
Heh, spent hundreds of hours on Flight Simulator doing just this, reading up on Encarta about beautiful cities, and then paying a 'virtual' visit in Flight Sim.
- mastazi 10y ago
  Yes, simulators are strangely compelling despite being seemingly "boring" at first sight. If you are interested in the genre, you can follow Squirrel on Youtube, I especially like his "trucking diaries" but there are flight sim videos as well: https://www.youtube.com/user/DaSquirrelsNuts https://www.youtube.com/user/DaSquirrelsNuts

egypturnash 10y ago

Have you tried No Man's Sky? Once you get the initial couple of hours of "game" out of the way, there is pretty much absolutely nothing to do except hop from star to star, land on planets, and wander around them looking at the prettiness. I sunk hours into it. I wish the PS4 version had a cheat I could enter to completely turn off the "survival" mechanism and the HUD so I could just put it up on my projector, find a nice view, and have a living painting on my wall.

Shorel 10y ago

Seems to me you will love Euro Truck Simulator 2.