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Coincidentally, teenagers are also the reason most gamers prefer single-player games.
This is a fact.
When I was late teens I played vanilla wow, but after adapting to adulthood, the idea of playing with or even talking to people decades younger than I am (with maturity to match age) has absolutely no appeal. I really want to play a lot of the multiplayer games out there, but don’t want to play with a bunch of asshole kids with nothing better to do than be assholes.
Face to face, maybe, because there’s a lot more context and social boundaries and stuff, but honestly I don’t even understand a lot of what they are trying to communicate at this point, and I honestly usually don’t care, so it’s not an appealing proposition at this point. That’s the full whole reason I don’t play ttrpgs anymore; can’t find an adult group and can’t stand to be around a group of 14yo boys.
I just play them exclusively with friends and mute random people that get obnoxious.
That genuinely sounds like a good middle point, unfortunately it isn’t actionable for me as I haven’t any friends with whom to play. My humans have drastically different genre interests than I do, assuming they even game.
Right from the start there have been adults only guilds in WoW though.
It's a shame, too. I don't really mind playing with other people, usually PvE, but when you're just so much more mature than they are the whole dynamic can be grating. PvP though? I'm not sure what's worse, the shit talkers or the teammate griefers who throw a game for some silly reason.
That said, I met my wife in an MMO and you very much can make genuine connections with strangers on the internet. Just... You know, if you're hitting 40 and they're 14, the FBI might want to have a word with you.
I dont mind teenagers, it is the absurd toxic masculinity culture I hate, which isnt really a teenager specific thing in my experience.
I mean, you're more or less correct although toxic masculinity feels pretty immature, and certainly more common with teenage boys. Given the number of muscle cars nearly running me off the road these days, I certainly agree they're not all teenagers, though!
Gotta wonder if that guy who just said he slept with your mom on COD was really 30+ year old "alpha male" lol
I agree and I think a salient reframing of your statement is teenagers typically more than anything else want to be treated as adults, to be a teenager is to constantly be observing young adults and attempting to emulate their social behavior. So the question becomes why do we tolerate toxic adult conservative men setting such a cruel and hateful example that teenagers then copy and magnify?
What some teenager screams at you in an online match is just a shrill echo of the serious and dangerous ideologies modern (and not modern) conservatism is explicitly founded on and violently defends the "right" to spew everywhere in every context consequences be damned (the consequences being a feature not a bug).
I don't play multiplayer because I don't want to be cussed out by a 6 year old.
I play games to have fun. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone.
I don't play multiplayer because I don't want to be cussed out by a 6 year old.
Or talked to. The younger, the more rude they are in chats.
Lol you're right
I mean yeah but Teenagers aren’t people.
They scare the shit out of me
They could care less as long as someone'll bleed.
Right? They are angry, physically enduring, strong. Luckily they're also constantly horny and therefore stupid.
Unfortunately, they're constantly horny and motivated to do stupid things.
I prefer co-op but the times I can play don’t always line up with the times my friends can play.
My favorite games are things like Destiny, Minecraft, Helldivers, and Terraria, when I have friends to play with.
When playing alone, live service games can be ok, and competitive PvP is about the worst experience out there.
Single player games are often a much better experience than either of those.
I love coop games and so many games seem like they're perfectly suited for it, but don't support it. A prime example is the city builder genre. There's a multiplayer mod for Cities: Skylines but it isn't perfect. On a bright note, the multiplayer mod for Rimworld is virtually flawless.
Pvp games are more likely to leave me feeling angry after a session compared to single player and coop games where I'm more often ending the session happy.
Yeah I'm not buying a game so the 13 year old mouth breathers can yell racist misogyny at me because I don't make the game the fulcrum of my existence.
Give me a Metroid where it's me, alone, vs a hostile world, and my thoughts.
Same, I was tired of having my ass handed to me then being tea bagged by preteens talking shit about my lack of skills and/or my mother. Excuse me for not playing FPSs eight hours every day after school like you, good Sir Acne.
As an adult gamer, I have a lot less time for games. Single player games are nice because I can make meaningful progress on a storyline/etc, and even do things like finish a game and move onto the next one.
Playing online pvp games can be fun, but it usually takes a huge time investment to be good. And in the time I have to play, there's rarely a feeling of progress. Spending 1-2 hours on a single player game and I have progressed in a distinctive way. Spend that same time in League or some other multiplayer game and I have nothing to show for it except a few ranking points.
For me funnily enough it feels the opposite for me, multiplayer competitive games get right to the point in a similar way that sports do, the motivation, depth and deep mental stimulation are always right there on the surface, meeting me head on the moment I open up the game and jump in. Very few singleplayer games do that and almost none of them can come close to the dynamic and always evolving experience of playing against (and with) humans.
I hate overly competive toxic players, it really isnt needing to win that motivates me, it is the mental stimulation from competing with humans that stimulates my brain because nothing is there to simply entertain me, rather everything is there to create an emergent experience that always surprises and challenges me and doesnt waste my time trying to make me feel like a powerful hero.
I like how differently we see this and I can definitely see where you are coming from!
My appetite for PvP dropped off precipitously after college. I just don't have the time to dedicate to getting good at any game, and every online multiplayer game I've ever played is toxic if you aren't at least decent. I have no interest in a sixteen year old cursing me out because I don't have the map memorized.
Single player generally also brings in much more flexibility, especially when it comes to things like mods. With my limited free time, if I'm enjoying a game except for thing x, I prefer the ability to remove or diminish that thing x. Also, you have the ability to pause to change laundry loads or whatever.
For me it's really a matter of mood and if my friends are available for something co-op.
I do have one PvP pleasure though and that's Street Fighter. I can't stand anything team based, but give me two characters on screen 1v1 and I'm all over it.
I only enjoy multi-player with my wife. Our Valheim settlement and world progression is something beautiful to behold. Even vanilla WoW for me is solo or bust. I just don't like people or Discord culture.
I love me some online coop, especially with friends. I even enjoy a few fighting games, like Tekken, although those are also more fun with friends.
Single player is pretty fun though, especially ones that are intended to be single player but have the option to do multiplayer like Valhiem and BG3.
I think it mostly comes down to how competitive people want to be. A lot of younger folks, including me 20 years ago, loved seeing ourselves on leaderboards even in team games. But over time the experience of getting immersed in single player or laughing about a shared experience in coop is just more fun that reminiscing about being at the top of a counterstrike match 15 years ago.
Plus some of us remember when skins and new maps were added to many games by the devs or through mods well before microtransactions became popular.
The only thing that I enjoy more than single player RPGs are co-op RPGs, to this day my favorite gaming experience is playing through the entirety of Tales of Graces f in co-op with my friend, and it's a shame most of these games don't even have a couch co-op option, much less an online mode, at least Larian does it with their games.
They're out there. I played new world for the better part of two years all in mature, grown up clans. I think at one point we did have a 17ish year old that we all kind of ragged on but he was a good kid who eventually left for a more PVP focused guild. Recently I've been playing pax dei and the average age in our guild has got to be 50ish. We started out with a group of like 5-6 late 20's-mid 30s folks but a long the way we ended up picking up around 15ish folks mostly 40-75ish? Retired gamers are here and if you need people to gather resources, craft and just chill while you roam the world dungeoning, I can't recommend a better bunch.
I represent that remark. My son has a bunch of 30ish buddies playing enshrouded. Me and another late 50s retired guy are totally fine crafting and building and mining while they go out to pla :) Thats exactly how we phrase it “wheres the kids?, oh out in the woods playing”.
I need another Uncharted style game. I don't want another always online, micro transaction filled, lootbox earning grindfest filled with people who wish cancer on your mother because you don't play as well as they think you should
Don't forget invasive anti-cheat components that can reduce performance, introduce security risks into your kernel, might be spying on everything else for all we know, and still fail to prevent people from cheating.
In another news a month ago, it said, young gamers do no longer seek confrontation as much and therefore play less PvP games.
My interest in anything online was gone the moment my Destiny group that came together to have fun was yelling at me because I was dying in a raid and laughed about it. Even Rocket League became too serious.
I feel this. There's enough toxic masculinity and just toxic people in online spaces before you make everything always a competition.
I would like playing with people more except I like to go slow and thorough and really savor the experience. No one else I've met plays games like that. I just end up feeling rushed when I play with others and it's not fun for me.
Teenagers have the time to really get good at these games and lack the money to buy lots of games so its natural they would focus on skill based games that you can spend a lot of time in
They needed a study to tell them that?
I mostly play video games to switch off and relax. So generally I play single player RPGs on the easiest setting and just explore the world and the story.
I do occasionally play something like PUBG if I'm after some excitement but I don't have time to master games like I did when I had no responsibilities or kids!
I have a big problem with internal validation. This makes most singleplayer experiences pretty meaningless to me. Antidepressants help, but only to an extent.
As a kid/teen, I only wanted to do online pvp. As I’ve gotten a bit older, I’ve found a lot not enjoyment out of coop. There’s still some competition, like dps charts in a raid, but it’s mostly the feeling of overcoming a challenge as a team that I look for now.
And as others have said, online coop is king. Love me some asymmetrical puzzle games.