As a kid, I remember watching my older brother play games on his PlayStation 2. I saw him almost beat Spyro 2 with no saves because we didn’t know how memory cards worked.
Seeing this made me fall in love with gaming.
But that love has dwindled over the years due to the shift in gaming culture.
As I grew older, I began playing games online with my school friends and new people that I met online from all over the world. What connected all of us was the ability to pick up a controller and simply play a video game. It didn’t matter if we were good. We didn’t need to buy any add-ons, and we were able to talk to other people in the game.
Nowadays, most games are centered around competitive play. They are riddled with microtransactions and high price tags, with few alternatives, especially on consoles like the PlayStation and Xbox.
The biggest games in recent years have been built around esports. This includes “Marvel Rivals,” “Valorant” and recent “Call of Duty” installments. Even long-lasting games have shifted focus to the competitive scene, notably “Fortnite” to a certain extent, and even mobile games like “Clash Royale.”
Over 40% of the player base in “Marvel Rivals” who have played over five ranked matches on PC are between platinum rank and grandmaster rank. The order of the ranks goes as:
- Bronze
- Silver
- Gold
- Platinum
- Diamond
- Grandmaster
- Celestial
- Eternity
- One Above All
This means a significant amount of the player base has put countless hours into competitive mode.
There were always sweats who played the games like their lives depended on it, but those were outliers when I was younger. The majority of players were just out there having fun and messing around. Being the best wasn’t important, but this isn’t the norm anymore.
There are many things to point your finger at as to why gaming has shifted this way. The rise of esports and the obsession of companies creating games built for esports can be a reason.
Esports is a multi-billion-dollar industry projected to reach around $5.9 billion by 2029.
There’s also the emergence of streamers, many of whom are current or retired professionals who show their audience the most optimal way to play a game and can inspire people to prioritize their skills over enjoyment.
The obsession with following a meta, which is the consensus best strategy in a game, has blown out of proportion. I was playing “Star Wars Battlefront II” a few months ago when it became viral again, and I was met with tons of people on TikTok and YouTube who claimed they had the best loadouts and strategies.
This is a “Star Wars” game that was marketed as an epic, cinematic shooter with lightsabers, not people running around abusing broken game mechanics and playing the most “overpowered” characters.
My frustration with the loss of casual gaming goes further than the shift of competitiveness, though.
The prices of games have skyrocketed in the last few years. $60 was the standard for AAA-caliber games. It would only go above that if you wanted the special edition.
Nowadays, most games are $70, and there are expensive in-game bundles shoved in your face, battle passes that give you a leg up on others and exclusive cosmetics.
This issue has gotten so out of hand that Epic Games, the creators of “Fortnite,” were ordered to refund over $126 million to players for their deceptive ways of charging players.
It’s rare to find a AAA game that doesn’t load up with multiple menus of offers for skins, coins or packs. This is why casual gaming has taken a nosedive.
It is more expensive than ever to be a gamer. Most mainstream games cater to those willing to spend.
For those who think finding cheaper and smaller indie games is the solution, I agree, but most are PC exclusives. While I do have a PC, I know that consoles are significantly cheaper, much more user-friendly and casual. So, a possible solution to this issue is locked behind a minimum $700 PC paywall, which shouldn’t be the only solution.
A lot of the fun and joy has been sucked out of gaming in exchange for a focus on profit, which is the reality for many hobbies. The gaming industry will most likely continue down this path due to how lucrative it has become, which is a sad thing to witness.
On to the next hobby, I guess.
