The most recent released game that I played extensively was Baldur's Gate 3, which was released in 2023. That and Starfield were the only games of 2023, and 2024 that I played. Although I did play Shadow of the Erdtree, the first and so far only DLC for Elden Ring, when it comes to full, independent game releases, I'm quite a bit behind. And its not because of game prices, I frequently buy computers and Godzilla toys that are double, or even tripple the standard $60 asking price of most AAA games. Instead, I just haven't been interested. Sure, Dragon Age: Veilguard is coming out, and Dragon Age: Origins is one of my favorite games ever, but even here I don't feel the enthusiasm for the game that I felt for say, the release of Dragon Age: Inquisition back in 2014, a game I played on release. In fact, the last game I preordered was Elden Ring in in 2022, and Fallout 4 from 2014 before that. All this is to say, I don't have the same excitement for new games that I had when I was a kid. Yet, I play video games every day; it and reading are my go-to hobbies that I put the most time into, Like the bulk of the books that I read, most of the games I play are at least 20 years old, or older. The last game I beat was Morrowind, as I was replaying the main game and all its DLCs. Before that, Dragon Age: Origins for my review. I find myself spending the bulk of my playtime in games that to the modern gamer seem antiquated, but to me are the quintessential gaming experiences. I have to question, is this because of me getting older? the gaming industry growing where I stagnate? Or are the games released today truly worse than the ones that I had growing up? I hope this will help me figure that out.
I'm in a unique position when it comes to gamers who now have careers, bills, and other such responsibilities: I have access to a staggered set of people of younger generations to my own, as well as a staggered set of people of older generations, each enjoying different games, and with different opinions on gaming. For context, I'm 24, and on the older-end of GenZ; referred to some as a "zillenial" for all that word has value. My close friend from Canada, as well as a contact in my work life are both millenials, and my brother-in-laws are each either squarely in the midpoint of GenZ, or the younger end of GenZ respectively. And in addition to all of these, my nephew is in Gen Alpha. For each of these generational brackets, I've observed some key differences in attitudes towards gaming, and gaming preferences. First, my own:
I prefer the games that I grow up with, and a generation just before my time, namely the Todd-trilogy of Elder Scrolls games (Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim; Morrowind being my favorite), old-school Bioware games, such as Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect 1, Baldur's Gate 1 + 2, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In respect to other RPGs, I love the FromSoftware 'Souls-like' games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, as well as the Fallout series, namely Fallout New Vegas. Moreover, I absolutely adore Minecraft, Vintage Story, Dwarf Fortress, and other such open-ended games with a greater emphasis on creativity. I also love some classic Nintendo games, like Super Mario 64, and The Legend of Zelda series (my favorites being Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past). This is to say nothing of my love of strategy games like the Civilization series, namely Civilization IV and V. And I would be remise to exclude the narrative adventure games from TellTale like The Walking Dead, and the structurally similar Life is Strange from Dontnod. All told, the bulk of the games that I enjoy were made between the mid 1990s and the mid-2010s. There are some outliers, such as Baldur's Gate 3, Red Dead Redemption, 5D Chess, Elden Ring and Celeste which came out more recently, and the Megaman games that came out before the 1990s, but largely the vast majority of my favorite games were released in this section of time. If I was to group these games based on something other than the years of their releases, I'd say that I tend to enjoy narratively satisfying games, or games that provide a significant challenge. In respect to strategy and creative games, I tend to enjoy those that allow for a decent amount of freedom of interaction. Besides these, I can't definitively find a set of commonalities besides their temporal relation. So, how does this compare to the other generations?
When it comes to my millenial contacts, they seem to enjoy games that I would not have expected. The one and only game that I frequently see my work contact play is Skyrim, while my friend from Canada almost exclusively plays Roblox and Minecraft. In both cases, they did not play games when they were young, but instead started playing games when they began to hit true mainstream adoption in the Playstation 2 through to Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 eras in respect to consoles. And in both cases, they almost exclusively play the most popular games of that time on their respective preferred platform that appeal to more "casual" audiences. Although both enjoy a few other games, these above games are the ones they play the most. In saying all of this, these two people would be far less likely to even know what games have been released in the past decade at all than any of the other generational brackets.
In respect to the GenZers: the mid-GenZ brother-in-law keeps fairly up-to-date with modern games, but has moved away from gaming somewhat in recent days, spending more time focusing in college, and working out. That being said, he plays a good deal of VR games, as well as racing games, each of which he tends to play the latest and greatest. He also plays some Fortnite with his friends, especially revisiting the game when new updates are released. That being said, he spends most of his time outside of gaming in recent days.
The younger GenZ brother-in-law has nearly identical gaming habits to his older brother, only playing more cutting-edge PC releases as opposed to VR titles (although he does play those as well). He has a new RTX video card in a gaming PC he frequently upgrades, and makes use of that card through quite a bit of Fornite, as well as whatever new hotness is out that he wants to play.
Finally, in respect to my nephew, the Gen Alpha case study, he plays mostly Roblox, and Minecraft, although he expresses frequent interest in playing Playstation 5, and more recent games that his parents rightly deem inappropriate for him. When it comes to Roblox, he gravitates towards horror games, and in Minecraft, he mostly likes flying around and splashing in the water, rather than engaging with the generally accepted intended ways of playing the game. This is not unlike how I played games as a kid, such as The Hobbit from 2003, which I used as a means of roleplaying as a Hobbit living their day-to-day life in Hobbiton, rather than going on the intended Zelda-esque adventure. In this respect, my nephew is aware of new releases, and has a desire to play them, but is simply not allowed.
So, having listed the various generational differences in gaming consumption from Gen Alpha to Millenial, are there any useful patterns revealed? I would say yes! In fact, it seems that the generational divides in gaming preference is strongly linked to what games either each respective generation grew up or was introduced to gaming with. For me, the games I played from my childhood into my late teens and early adult hood are the games that I seem to enjoy the most, and recent games that come out that emulate the style of the games that I enjoyed as a kid are the few new games that I am excited for and ultimately end up playing. In the case of Baldur's Gate 3, not only is it a sequel to the first two Baldur's Gate games, which I love, but more broadly it is a contuation of one of my favorite genres throughout my childhood and teens, being CRPGs. This is to say nothing of the fact that its a spiritual successor to Dragon Age: Origins, another CRPG favorite of mine. And in respect to the other generations: the GenZers play the games that release today because they are in the midst of their formative gaming experiences, as is the same with GenAlpha, whereas the Millenials prefer the games that introduced them to gaming, and little else.
This is all to say that it would be wrong to suggest that games are truly getting worse. Rather, games are changing; made to satisfy a rapidly changing generational bracket that has left me and my fellows behind. It makes me sad that I'll likely never get another game like Morrowind, but I'm happy to see that my brother-in-laws get to experience the Morrowinds of their own today. And when I see my nephew, I know that his Morrowind is still to come. I take comfort in that. The world is changing, and I'm not, but that's okay. I don't have to change if there are other people to define the change around me. I'll always have Morrowind, and more older games than I would ever be able to play in my lifetime; so its not so bad that I'm not terribly excited for Dragon Age: Veilguard. I hope that the gamers of today enjoy it like I enjoyed Dragon: Age Origins.
To the question in the title: Am I even a gamer? If the latest and greatest doesn't excite me anymore, is it even fair to call myself a gamer? Well besides the fact that I play games as a hobby, thus meeting the one and only meaningful qualifier to classify myself as a gamer, I would still call myself an avid gamer even without an interest in modern gaming. Gaming, like any form of art, is inherently situational; games are made for the time that they are made in, and few games are truly "timeless" as it were. In much the same way that my brother-in-law doesn't regularly listen to and enjoy Mozart and the Beatles, if you were to transplate someone from the 1700s and someone from the 1960s to the modern day and show them Chappell Roan, or Kendrick Lamar, they'd probably hate it. But are Mozart and the Beatles less music or musically valuable than Chappell Roan and Kendrick Lamar? I wouldn't say that, in fact I would be surprised if anyone would say that. A consequence of getting older is realizing that your childhood is gone and is never coming back. And a consequence of maturing is realizing that's okay.
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