InquilineKea

When I was young, I thought that they were awesome. I just had fun with them.

I continued buying games as I thought they were awesome.

Then I got Age of Empires II, and stayed with the forum community associated with that game from 2001-2003. The stay in the forum community really changed my attitude towards games. For one thing, certainly, it exposed me to the developers who made the games. I no longer saw games as totally awesome things. Rather, they are ways to make money by mass appeal. I still think that some computer games are interesting, in the way that they represent simulations that have so many variations in strategy. But they're not an absolute means to have fun anymore.

A lot of gaming in one's later years come with social components. My gaming never had a social component until then.

That being said, I'm amazed at how I found Runescape so exciting for several months. But I never got into any MMORPGs after Runescape.

When you learn everything within a video game, and realize that most video games fall along similar design platforms, the "awesomeness" of video games really disappears. For some reason, figuring out the game mechanics is still entertaining.

I often think of what I would have gotten into were I a few years younger. Then the hot games wouldn't have been SIM games (before all those Sims expansion packs), but rather, MMORPGs, a number of RTS, and a number of FPS. The last game I really got into was Star Wars Battlefront II. I don't know why - but it was really fun, and one's gameplay strategy was sufficiently varied enough such that it doesn't seem so much like a click-fest (in the way Wolfenstein 3D and MMORPGs are).

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I hate most adult forms of entertainment. I don't see why people can find staring at sports games for hours on end so fascinating (though I used to be into baseball statistics in 1999). MMORPGs seem that way too. I need something else to have fun in. And that's probably going to be an academic thing. Still, analyzing game mechanics is something I think about from time to time. Not to mention that computer games would be excellent for psychological tests.

Video games are really the only form of mass-entertainment that I find appealing at all (unless you count online forums as one, and I consider them as modes of expression, since I don't really "have fun" on forums, but rather find them as places where there are many prompts to respond to - and to just think). I haven't played much in the last few years, but go in spurts. I like to learn (even if it's the learning of arbitrary rulesets) and to analyze - and video games offer an excellent medium for those tasks. Plus, you don't need to talk to anyone in real life to play video games - nor do you have to go outside of your home. I'm naturally lazy.

I'd like to wait for some number of years and see what video games will be like in the future. Graphics improvements are starting to saturate, so improvements in other areas really should come. But there isn't much motivation to do anything innovative within the gaming industry. I'd like to see MIT EducationArcade release something to the public.

For some reason, I don't like puzzles.