hi all,

I've noticed an interesting... trend? Not sure it's a trend.

Anyway, my wife and I enjoyed playing games like the TotalWar series, Age of Empires, Neverwinter Nights etc a few years ago, and then got into the busy-with-kids phase. We're slightly less stressed out these days and are returning to the gaming scene, and even though I have good hardware, I look around at the current crop of games and see:
  • Copycat game design
  • Copy protection debacles
  • Phone-home weekly activations
  • Design teams dropping key features and saying they'll be in the "next version"
  • Steeper and steeper system reqs for no better (usually worse) gameplay experience
  • Console gaming getting the lion's share of press attention, for games that make me gag (sorry, if I want to play a guitar, I'll plug it into my amp)

To solve this problem, we've gone back to all the old favourites. Sure I had to buy them all again because the old disks are scratched to pieces, but at $10 for the Gold versions of everything, it's not much of an investment.

I'd put it down to my grognard nature but I see this happening with *everyone* I know at work. Exactly 0 of 15 gamers here have bought more than one new game in the last two years.

I might just work in a weird little isolated area, so I'm curious to know if anyone else is experiencing, or seeing, this sort of behaviour.