Aren't all computer games the same?

D

drhowarddrfine

A number of people here are into shoot 'em up computer games. I am not. When I see videos of people playing computer games it seems they are all the same. You get placed into a battle zone of some kind, you run around trying to find bad guys, you shoot bad guys and avoid getting shot. And that's it. The only difference among games is the look of the battle zone.

Am I wrong?

The last time I played any kind of computer or game box game was decades ago. It was a Ninetendo a friend had and we'd play baseball on it. Before that, I'd play arcade games at the airport while waiting for a flight back when I traveled a lot for work and had free time waiting. Since then I have no interest in today's computer games.
 
There are lots of other types of games, puzzle-solving games for example. World-building games, management games, the list goes on and on.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
A number of people here are into shoot 'em up computer games. I am not. When I see videos of people playing computer games it seems they are all the same. You get placed into a battle zone of some kind, you run around trying to find bad guys, you shoot bad guys and avoid getting shot. And that's it. The only difference among games is the look of the battle zone.

Am I wrong?

The last time I played any kind of computer or game box game was decades ago. It was a Ninetendo a friend had and we'd play baseball on it. Before that, I'd play arcade games at the airport while waiting for a flight back when I traveled a lot for work and had free time waiting. Since then I have no interest in today's computer games.
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I was never in the shoot'em games but I have all the time on
games/rocksndiamonds
 
cracauer@ said:
Flightsims would like a word for starters?
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Yes and there are native flight simulators for FreeBSD/Linux/etc - FlightGear is one.

It is perfectly fine that you drhowarddrfine have no interest in computer games. Many people do not.

I myself learned to program by typing in the BASIC source code into computers from "books" in order to play video games -- 100 BASIC Computer Games: Microcomputer Edition . In particular I wanted to play Star Trek. I was completely blown away by Apple's version of Star Trek for the Apple ][ back in the day -- I used to load that game into the Apple ][ using a "cassette tape recorder" (no joke).

Programmers learn by experimenting and trying things. Not everything we do "works the first" time, so we keep trying until we succeed or completely fail. We can always "stop" and go read a newspaper or whatever. I read a lot of books. But to me gaming has always been rewarding - and I started gaming on Apple ][ and at "7 Eleven" playing Atari Asteroids. Well to be fair -- I had a "pong" console game from Radio Shack before all that... on my Black and White TV! Remember when there was no CoLoR on TV?
 
After finishing Doom & Quake I lost interest in FPS games.

I prefer simple & stupid games like Supertux. But I haven't played any lately. It's amazing the amount of time you can waste on them.
 
Been a gamer since the Commodore Vic20 to the Amiga to the PC. All types & to help keep the grey matter working. The best flight simulator i have ever used was Aerowinx PSX complete simulation of the B747-400 amazing coding used by professional pilots & flight training if only it would work on FreeBSD, having to use it in a linux VM.
 
I'm into puzzle games, there are many in the ports collection that are excellent. When I was young i was more into shoot'em up but they was 30+ years ago, Doom - Doom2 - Duke Nukem 3D era.
 
To me that wasn't clear that actually you meant "Aren't all shoot'em up games the same?"
And since You don't like them anyway, which is okay, I find them too stressful myself, prefer gaming to relax, and I also pointed out a major difference, I don't see no point in looking even closer at the differences there are.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
The only difference among games is the look of the battle zone.
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I am not a big fan of First-Person Shooter games, but there are a couple from Valve, Portal and Portal II, which are pretty cool. You have a gun, but it doesn't shoot people; it shoot portals in walls, floors, and ceilings. It is a puzzle game, where you use portals to get around obstacles, such as pools of toxic waste.

There are also a lot of building/harvesting games, like Stardew Valley, Critter Cove, Coral Island, Teddy's Haven.

There are a couple of hotel simulators, and a of couple grocery store simulators.

There are Real-Time Strategy games, where you send out troops to fight enemies. It is displayed as groups of tiny soldiers moving across the map--no actual first-person combat.

Rez, originally for the Playstation II, but now available on Steam as Rez Infinite, is a rail shooter game. You travel along a fixed path while you try to shoot objects that are firing at you. (The plot is that you are a hacker inside a computer, disabling its security mechanisms. What makes Rez cool is the music, which is synchronized with the action, and gets more and more intense as you go deeper into the game.

My wife and I both hate First-Person Shooters, and we still manage to find a bunch of games to play. (On some platforms, my handle is Reluctant Gamer, because I used to feel the same as you about computer games.)
 
No they're not. Dooms and Quakes are for hardcore gamers, where skills are important. Yes, there are "skins" and these games are now colorful like never before (>=Quake 3), but still it's about skills. On the other hand there are Fortnite like games, more about skins and "fun".
I miss good old Quake I times - game with dirty colors, heavy music (NIN!), rocket jumps, DM4, .. eh I'm old.
 
Mostly fast reactions. But I experienced, when I got over ~45 I cannot keep up with the kids anymore. I could get them sometimes with tactics, new ideas, and (evil) tricks. But those are often not wanted, even discouraged. (Anybody not storming blindly coverless into crossfire is a "camper" - I wonder why there are different maps, and not just an empty, coverless arena, only.) Any online game I played is pure anarchy: no teams, no tactics. That's why it's also called "Egoshooter" 😂
In the end it all comes to reflexes, only.
Besides I'm too old for this I feel mentally underchallenged, while being too stressed at the same time. Plus all the flaming in the online chats, plus empty servers, all have to buy the new successor... - I don't waste neither my money, nor my time on those anymore.
I play games to have fun, not being pissed all the time.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
I should have added on to my question. Skills at doing what? Running between rooms and shooting objects? Which is my question. Aren't they all the same? Haven't we seen this movie before?
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Again, they are not the same. If they were, a good Quake (i.e. Champions) player and good Fortnite player match would be even. Game pace, map control, movement, weapons - all is different. Quakers are natural born killers and would win easily, they are faster and have better map control (remembering and utilising map resources - weapons, armors etc.).
Some nice samples how game can be 'mastered':
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9L0XQz9Bu0
 
drhowarddrfine said:
A number of people here are into shoot 'em up computer games. I am not. When I see videos of people playing computer games it seems they are all the same.

Am I wrong?
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I think that's just because - as you said yourself - you're not into that scene.

I'd say it's similar to my mother looking at a bunch of computers running different operating systems and saying "it seems they are all the same".
 
And one more note about 'being the same'. Some of these games defined the genre and have huge legacy - like Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake series. What id Software (Carmack and co) did in terms of software craftmanship was hard to imagine at that time, to some even today. From my perspective they were very good coders, writing huge software in pure C, rediscovering things like BSP trees (to mitigate hardware limitations, Z-Buffer I guess), or fast inverse square root .
Two beautiful things in one, great games, where skills (not payments or skins) mattered, and getting the most out of (a computer / the hardware) not just requiring players to buy faster components.
 
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