How 90’s video games wired our minds differently
Posted by cafeteriastyle@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 151 comments
Posted by cafeteriastyle@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 151 comments
averydangerousday@reddit
What’s interesting about this is that online PC games now provide me with socialization that couch console gaming stopped being able to provide once my friends and I had full time jobs, got married, and had kids. It’s been this way since I started playing WoW in 2004. I have IRL friends with whom I maintain connections through online gaming, and online friends who I now have a more face to face relationship with.
I’m watching my kids play these games now, and they’re clearly not getting as much out of them as I do. They’ve become far more interested in games like D&D and Magic the Gathering where you need to be interacting face to face. They’re excited for summer and the prospect of getting out on their bikes/scooters. My son who has been a lifelong risk-averse indoor cat is now getting outside every single day to get better at riding his scooter, even after falling and getting hurt multiple times. Now they only play their online games as ways to pass the time or alternatives for rainy days.
I’m by no means arguing anything presented here. Rather, I think it’s really interesting to watch this play out over time and observe the similarities and differences.
GarblingCumfarts@reddit
What's funny is, WoW started with no maps, having to gather information on where to go, and relying on people. If it wasn't for add-ons I downloaded, I probably would have never gotten through with some quest.
Now WoW just holds your hand and you gain levels so fast.
Also, I'm with you on card games. They are huge right now and get kids out. I just wish there were more couch co-op games, but at least Nintendo still gives us that option.
cortesoft@reddit
Yeah, my friend group from college still plays the original Halo a couple of times a week online, 25 years after we first started playing it in the dorms. It is nice that we can still hang out and play online, we all are married with kids and living in different parts of the country.
I also still have a weekly online video game session with a couple of highschool friends, who also live far away. I know we wouldn’t be staying in touch like this if we didn’t have our weekly games.
In fact, I recently got a new job after I was layed off through one of the guys who was invited into our halo group a few years back. We joke that video games are the new golf for our generation, and I joke with my wife that I have to play more to keep up my business contacts.
My kids are definitely gamers like me, though, so I can’t relate to the kids not getting as much from games. I enjoy watching them fall into games, and telling me about them and showing me when they do something cool.
__3Username20__@reddit
This is great for your son, truly. Unfortunately, it’s so easy for many to be so sucked in, addicted, and almost “trapped” by these games. Its funny, because I’ve been a gamer my whole life, and probably will be until the end of my days, and I’ve had that same exact experience with positive interaction and friends online that I couldn’t get in-person anymore, or at least it SEEMS to me like I couldn’t not get in-person anymore, so I know it’s not ALL bad. However, I also know that companies are trying harder and harder to keep the attention of the general public, and “hack our brains” in that way, whether it’s truly nefarious or just driven by simple profit reasons. Some gaming, as well as social media, seems to me to be worse enough these days, that we really DO need to be more careful about what we choose to play/get sucked into, and allow our kids to play/get sucked into, because the trap/addiction really is getting improved upon.
Again, I love that your son is amongst friends and a community that has a healthy balance, that’s amazing. It’s not always the case, for all kids/people, and I think that percentage is trending the wrong way.
averydangerousday@reddit
Oh, I can definitely see that at play with my kids and their experiences with online gaming. I don’t disagree with you as a snapshot of where we are right now.
Rather, I’ve seen signs that give me a relatively secure hope that things will turn around. The hamster wheel only provides so much fulfillment. With that said, I think the outcomes we’re going to see are going to be a lot more polar, ie more kids gravitating towards outside/in person activities exclusively as they become adults and more kids getting sucked in completely by dopamine farming games and AI waifus.
clutzycook@reddit
I will say that everything I know about loading a dishwasher came from untold hours of Tetris.
Dude_man79@reddit
Either loading a dishwasher or loading a moving van.
GarblingCumfarts@reddit
I literally use the term "Tetris it" when packing our SUV. I don't think my daughter has ever played Tetris, but she sure knows what "Tetris it" means.
clutzycook@reddit
Oh I'm even better at loading a car!
grimeyduck@reddit
So you're one of those people that packs your dishwasher and nothing gets clean?
clutzycook@reddit
Nope. I learned to load it strategically and make sure everything is optimally placed to ensure the dishes are cleaned properly while minimizing the amount of hand washing I have to do. I rarely have dishes that fail to get cleaned on the first run and it's usually when my kids do the dishes.
I will also add that I have a Bosch, and it is a very forgiving machine.
grimeyduck@reddit
Let the kids play Tetris
clutzycook@reddit
I'm not sure if you can get the same effect if it's not on an OG Gameboy with the Russian music and everything.
FoofaFighters@reddit
No, their dishes disappear if they form a line from one side of the rack to the other. 😁
Rich-Violinist-7263@reddit
I have an Xbox but have literally Never played online. I still just play a ridiculous amount of Tetris. I would love to understand how many hours of my life has been Tetris
ohb78@reddit
Does modern Tetris still have the Russian theme song?
Eshin242@reddit
It was terrible. I was loading my dishwasher perfectly. Cups, plates, silverware, pans, leftover containers.. all of them were sliding in perfectly. I don't think a super computer run by a NASA engineer could have done any better calculations to make things fit.
Then right as I tossed In the last spoon... It all vanished, gone. One second the most magnificent arrangement of dirty dishes ready to be washed... Then nothing.
Cost me over $400 to replace everything, absolute nightmare.
True story.
lurkylurkeroo@reddit
Did the dishwasher explode?
Risikio@reddit
I can tell you there would be a lot less racial slurs in gaming if you were literally sitting on the couch next to the person.
Inspi@reddit
Teabagging your enemy would be a whole different story too
Sorry-Joke-4325@reddit
Bro, we teabagged in Halo on the original Xbox.
GarblingCumfarts@reddit
I've been playing online multiplayer games since Duke3d on mplayer.net and I'm pretty sure Halo is where teabagging originated. If I'm wrong I'd like to know,
OgreHombre@reddit
Is that a thing? I peaced out on video games at PS2.
ouijahead@reddit
I don’t play games online , but that’s what I’ve heard. If you’re wearing a headset talking to people 1000’s of miles away from you while playing something competitive, the shit talking tends to go to the extreme. I have no interest in playing games with little kids . I bet it’s satisfying as hell to whoop their asses and hear them losing their shit because their brains are not properly trained yet to deal with frustration and loss. But hearing their little voices screaming and cussing at me would get old quickly. They call them squeakers.
ohb78@reddit
Yeah being cussed out by 10 year old sounds miserable. Main reason I’m yet to play online games
cortesoft@reddit
This really depends on the game. Plenty of online games aren’t full of swearing and slurs.
rdhdboi767@reddit
I remember walking into my older brother's room about to ask him something and he hushed me real quick. Took his headphones out and these two White dudes were going IN. It's insane the level of bold these guys have knowing they can't be touched and the way they talk you can tell the ones doing that aren't the kind that grew up anywhere near even a decent amount of minorities. Everything they know about most Black and Brown people comes from what they've seen online and TV.
NewPhoneWhoDys@reddit
That's exactly when they started giving me migraines!
red286@reddit
The only times in my entire life that I've ever been called the n-word have all been on Xbox Live.
For the record, I'm white.
KillerSavant202@reddit
I’ve heard it here and there but it’s not that prevalent in most online games.
I played Call of Duty for the first time in like 20 years at a friends house and it was fucking constant though. Something about that game attracts the absolute worst kind of people.
ImOnlyHereForTheCoC@reddit
Regret to report that online gamers are still racist as fuck if ARC Raiders is any indication. Some pretty fucked user/club names and text chats in Rocket League as well.
IceSmiley@reddit
Except in Mike Tyson's Punch Out which had the stereotypes built in
Randym1982@reddit
The most hateful thing you could do is... Unplug their controller and walk out. lol.
The other thing is I did have strategy guides back then. Nintendo Power, Gamepro, EGM. Tips and Tricks. Prima. etc. You just had to go out of your way to get them, and if you were broke. You had to bring a note book with you to the book store. And then write down the codes or guide information. Then ride back home on your bike.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
ready... FIGHT!
_ism_@reddit
have you seen that black mirror episode where his mortal kombat avatar is a girl and his buddy's is a guy and they.... and then in real life it's wierd because it's 2 dudes who can't talk about it IRL
PackageNorth8984@reddit
Just as many sexual orientation slurs though if kids today are anything like kids in the ‘90s.
snow_garbanzo@reddit
Me and my cousins may have proven your theory wrong. The insurmountable amount of profanity still gives me the chills.....i hate racism though, so there is that.
ouijahead@reddit
It’s so dark in there. I like games better now. Not the ones he listed. There’s just so many different kinds. And you are spoiled for choice. Games when I was a kid could be so incredible hard, and they just weren’t that good many of them. I’m speaking of NES era really.
ymOx@reddit
Yeah I've been thinking about that. You (or I at least) didn't finish nearly all of your games. At least I didn't. Most of them were too difficult to reach the end. Legend of Zelda II? Kid Icarus? Forget about it.
I guess that's how they did replayability back then. These days it's much more common for people to get all the way to the end. And I like it better now I think. Games these days are much closer to art, some just have art-like parts of them, and some games are entirely art pieces. It's a shame when people put in all that effort and then it could be too hard for most people to see all of it.
Ok-Worldliness2161@reddit
We never beat Legend of Zelda II either. Tried again as an adult and barely got anywhere! I wonder if anyone ever managed to beat it lol
ouijahead@reddit
Exactly how I see it. I will say though, it was kind of a trip when I was 26 or so I started collecting NES games and was beating a lot of them with the game genie. It was crazy seeing parts of games that were just impossible to get to as a kid. Now I have a raspberry pi and can play every single game you can think of from childhood and with the option of cheats. It’s gotten old though. I have to give it lots of time before it’s fun again.
As you were saying. Some modern video games are just exquisite works of art and can be on the level of Hollywood movies story wise that you can participate in. I kinda stopped watching tv and movies.
MrPreviz@reddit
I love this perspective. But dont get it twisted, most of us console gamers were still pretty lonely back then. Gaming wasnt as socially accepted as it is now. "Gamer Nerd" was a term I heard thrown around
LadyLoki5@reddit
It was especially tough for girls being a "gamer nerd" back in the 80s and 90s, at least where I was from. In high school I took all computer-related electives, HTML, c++, web design, etc, and was always the only female in the class. The guys in the classes outright ignored me for the most part and I knew no other girls who were interested in nerdy shit.
MrPreviz@reddit
Crazy thing is, you’d clean house nowadays. How fast it all changed…
rdhdboi767@reddit
It's nuts seeing everything from anime, manga, cartoons, skateboarding, comics, video games, cosplay, etc. so celebrated on a mainstream level now for the generations of us that grew up being mocked for it previously. My younger self would've been a great deal more confident if being into those things past the age of ten wasn't often so mocked.
yakswak@reddit
I think that's what happens when the gamer nerds grew up and have money in hand to spend on what they want...
rocokohaku@reddit
The fact that anime films are now played in IMAX just floors me. God I was picked on so much in high school.
squish042@reddit
True, but that was mostly reserved for the kids that NEVER wanted to go outside to play.
MrPreviz@reddit
After the NES and Genesis came out, outside was lame. Thats the average 80s gamer
squish042@reddit
Agree to disagree. My best memories were outside.
MrPreviz@reddit
But we arent my dude. You were an outsider, I was a hardcore gamer. Different paths. I was just speaking on how the gamers were trated
davwad2@reddit
Yeah! I'm on board with what's being said here. My ability to read maps and remember directions/routes developed from a decade plus of playing games on the NES, SNES, and PS. I recently played the original RE remake and my routes through the mansion were easily restored or in some cases, still remembered from when I played it 30 years ago.
This is probably why I don't vibe with Minecraft that much. Whenever I play with the kids, my instinct is to find the goal and achieve it.
There's definitely not much in the couch playing experience for me. I left New Orleans to go to undergrad and never returned full time. From like 8th through 12th grade I would consistently go to my cousin's house and we spend all night Friday night going round after round on Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter Alpha, Madden, and NFL Game Day, all with a healthy dose of smack talk that you either backed up or got clowned after getting whipped. Fun times.
YogurtclosetDull2380@reddit
These guys are acting like Nintendo Power wasn't a thing.
Mamasan-@reddit
The lion king game
cafeteriastyle@reddit (OP)
That game was so fun. I still haven’t beat Earth Worm Jim tho
kermitcooper@reddit
Modern games try to sell kids everything. Thats a big difference.
regular_poster@reddit
Older generations would argue they developed their brains similarly by chainsmoking.
Scrotchety@reddit
IDSPISPOPD & IDDQD is why I'm now a 46yo failure living in his car. It all makes sense
rks404@reddit
this sounds like one of those 'life was tough and it made us tougher" type of folk wisdom tales that Boomers used to tell us (I'm Gen X). There's a bigger market for video games and people are trying different styles of gameplay. I don't think there were any games as hard as Elden Ring back in the day and there are tons of crunchy hard games on the marketplace now for people who what that.
Chunklob@reddit
There was also about a dozen kids on the same block all around the same age. I don't think that's happening very often anymore. There's 4 kids including mine that live on this block.
LadyLoki5@reddit
Yeah I grew up in a cul de sac, my folks bought the place in '86 and in all 8 houses in the cul de sac, every single one had kids.
But all of the parents that bought those houses in the 80s, still live there. The entire neighborhood is old people now, all us Xennial kids have long since moved out and there are no kids left. The entire demographic has just shifted.
More and more boomers are choosing not to sell the homes they raised their kids in, they opt not to downsize.
Where I live now, there's just one house on the street that has kids.
_Notebook_@reddit
lol, what?
KillerSavant202@reddit
People are having less kids and the ones that do are typically stopping after their first.
socialcommentary2000@reddit
This is a real phenomenon. It happened in my hometown. It happened where I spent my teenage years as well.
ShibaInuDoggo@reddit
Yet we all bought GamePro magazine, Game Genie, Game shark, or anything else to help us "cheat".
Sure, problem solving increased, but it increased to find shortcuts and to ban Odd-job.
Own_Courage_4382@reddit
Rich kid entered chat
-Boston-Terrier-@reddit
You think only rich people were able to snag a Game Genie?
cjthomp@reddit
Another one!
lanemyer78@reddit
You think you had to be a rich kid to own a Game Genie or read Gamepro?
KillerSavant202@reddit
If you had a subscription you were a bit of a rich kid.
lanemyer78@reddit
Who is saying anything about having a subscription?
KillerSavant202@reddit
I’m just saying that’s the divider. Picked up an issue covering the game you play average kid, had a subscription rich kid.
lanemyer78@reddit
Again, no one is talking about subscriptions. Just because you have a magazine subscription doesn't mean you are a rich kid anyway. It not a " divider" for anything.
ShibaInuDoggo@reddit
Nah, we had an Atari 2600 and an eventually Game Boy between us 3 boys. First console I actually owned was when I bought a Wii in 2008. Assuming you don't count the occasional Tiger.
Inspi@reddit
Odd-job + Grenades + Lemming Award = hilarious (but pissed off friends)
cat_at_the_keyboard@reddit
At least where I lived this was considered incredibly lame and you possibly got beat up for being such a loser to use cheats
frawgster@reddit
I distinctly remember all the mechanisms you mention being “last resort” rather than the default. Or maybe that was just how people in my gaming sphere and I viewed them. 🤷♂️ Gaming for me and those in my circle was never about cheating or subverting the natural flow. It was about finishing the game using the limited tools that were immediately available; our brains, the manual, the gameplay experience of others, and depending on the game, MAYBE an issue of Nintendo Power.
We’d bust out the cheating tools AFTER completing the game. This would add additional gameplay elements outside of the natural flow. And that was assuming we even had the tools. Game Genie was prohibitively expensive. So was GamePro.
Organic_Popcorn@reddit
Ah, using GameShark to unlimited shotgun my way through resident evil 2, now I miss playing it.
riot_act_ready@reddit
Yeah when a bunch of randoms are talking about what "Scientist's say" on a podcast I immediately discount it or at least heap significant doubt on those 'findings'
Moxie_Stardust@reddit
I also can't find reference to a specific study on the video in the topic, a lot of things that link back to presumably the same Newsweek article you found (https://www.newsweek.com/experts-reveal-how-90s-games-shaped-kids-brains-differently-11150806). There's a number of studies on the effects of gaming on the hippocampus, and this analysis of existing literature (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6829166/), but nothing solidly comparing the differences between the effects of playing older games versus more modern games (this would seem a potentially difficult subject to study now). Wouldn't be surprised if they were reading from some AI-generated article drawing on a variety of these sources.
Grumpy-Troglodyte@reddit
you mean games like Top Gun and TMNT and Marble Madness that you died CONSTANTLY at.. yes, i totally agree, that makes a lot of sense
Urist_Macnme@reddit
Ahem.
Utter shite. Like 100% absolute dogshit.
“90’s games taught patience, planning and tolerance”
Or… as was more frequently the case; taught rage quitting, throwing the controller at the screen and screaming into the void. Oh, and arguing with your siblings over who’s go it was. And blowing on the cartridge to get it to work.
Great68@reddit
Lol, hit the nail on the head. This should be higher. There were certainly a few times in my childhood that the NES controller was thrown at the TV. Good thing TV's were made out of glass back then, and relatively resistant to projectile damage.
I really disliked games that were overly difficult and repetitive. There were quite a few that I bought, got stuck, then stopped playing, and consequently felt like I never got my money's worth out of that game.
Any-Scarcity-5020@reddit
so, what about Game Genie?
disinaccurate@reddit
The thing I hate the most in modern gaming is the floating waypoint.
It lets players be lazy and mindlessly follow the dot.
It lets game designers be lazy and not have to design a world with navigational affordances. Which is why “just turn waypoints off” isn’t a solution. If the game world isn’t designed to be navigated without the floating dot crutch, with signage, thoughtful pathing, “realistic” layouts that can be inferred from, etc, then getting rid of the dot only leaves behind a nonfunctional experience.
Unique-Accountant253@reddit
Sid Meier said that in the original Civilization, people were not supposed to savescum, so their civ would experience setbacks, but people just usually savescummed anyway.
kremlingrasso@reddit
It's bullshit. Jump and run games caused more frustration and aggression than shooters, exactly becuse in a shooter you could try different approaches every try, it's basically a puzzle game where violence is just the means to progress. In wolfeinstein or doom there are hundreds of ways to clear a room or a corridor and everyone figured out their own.
Mario and prince of persia and the like you have to get the one sequence exactly right and even the slightest deviation is punished. It's not a game it's a torture device and had a much more negative effect on kids mental health.
Oh yeah and everyone fucking cheated in the 90s because the games were shitty optimized and insanely difficult. Let's not put poor gameplay design on a pedestal like some kind of character building experience.
MnkyBzns@reddit
My 12 yr old nephew has an emulator for OG Mario Bros that lets you revert back 10 seconds, even after you die.
Just fell in a pit? Back in time for an instant redo
scormegatron@reddit
As an 80’s/90’s gamer I agree — and it makes me so thankful there are modern games (Bloodborne, Hotline Miami, etc) still providing that kick in the nuts my inner child so enjoyed.
Apprehensive_Map64@reddit
Can't express just how disappointed I am every single time I see a new multiplayer game that has side by side and.. nope not on PC. I know one of the major core memories I made with my boys was playing It Takes Two and Split Fiction with them and sadly the choices beyond that are quite poor.
Rich-Violinist-7263@reddit
Same, I don’t understand why they can’t make more side by side.
Apprehensive_Map64@reddit
Probably money. There are plenty of games that let you play side by side on Xbox or PS but they don't let you do that on PC because they figure they can sell more copies. No it's not as fun sitting in my office while one of my boys is on the TV in the living room and we're playing 'together'.
Mall_of_slime@reddit
It Takes Two is so goddamn fun. Haven’t played Split Faction but sounds like I should. There’s a prison escape game that fits the bill. Forgive me but I forget its name. It’s on Steam. It’s pg-13 stuff as most I remember. But fun split screen co-op thing similar to ITT.
Apprehensive_Map64@reddit
Yeah my boys are 7&9. I tried it last year and figured that one can wait a few years. Split Fiction gets a bit of flack but I actually liked the story better and while we would skip the cutscenes in ITT we would let them play out on SF
kokujinzeta@reddit
This is probably why Souls games are so popular. No Death runs scratch that itch.
rocokohaku@reddit
I was thinking about 90s JRPGs and how none of these kids would have the attention span to play 60 hours worth of turn-based combat.
Rakataz@reddit
i still got somewhere a handdrawn map for "A Boy and his Blob." the level you interacted with a game was just different.
especially if you're growing up with DOS Games. changing AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS just you can run Doom.
One time, we spent New years eve at a friends house, my and his family. We spend the whole evening cracking Princes of Persia 2 in his room. There was this password screen and you have to put in the correct symbol according to an instruction only found in the manual (something like that). We brute forced it by writing down which combinations worked. In the end we had every symbol and the correct choice. We were so into it we almost missed the clock to midnight. We celebrated with the parents and 5 min later we were back to cracking.
nirreskeya@reddit
I probably still have the unnecessary map I tried to make over the course of several weeks for the underground train section of Myst before figuring out the trick. Also I've been thinking about A Boy and his Blob a bunch recently because I finished my third or fourth play-through of The Last Guardian. I feel like there was some influence there.
QEMM. Quite literally downloading extra RAM.
socialcommentary2000@reddit
This was me to a tee. I had notebooks filled with hand drawn maps and notes. At one point I had mapped out the entirety of Simon's Quest just so it was easy to reference back if I needed to. The ironic thing is, in the process of being that detailed in noting things, I never really needed the notes for the subsequent playthroughs.
BigBlueMountainStar@reddit
Up, down, left, right, A + Start
That sorted out the Sonic issue
mixreality@reddit
My main game in high school and beyond was Ultima Online. You wander out of town and there are murderers, and when you die all your shit stays on your corpse, lootable by other players. Also if you didn't come back to your house for 2 weeks it would collapse and all the shit in it stayed in the game world, epic fights over them and it was the most lucrative part of the game.
You also had 5 character slots and skill caps so there were 50+ different templates of viable character, you might have a mage, a warrior, a harvester, a crafter, a tamer, a thief. In PVP part was gear based but a lot was your skills at fighting, using the environment to break line of sight, knowing 50 hotkeys with muscle memory, you could fight outnumbered, kill them all and loot their stuff, it was epic.
Nowadays its 1 character can get all skills/abilities, and items are the most important thing so obviously you can't ever lose it, and oh some guy has better gear even though you're the same level but you can't even touch him and he can kill you in 2 hits. So you gotta grind grind grind for that super op gear
VonBrewskie@reddit
Some of this is true. But let's not act like Nintendo Power wasn't a thing. We all had access to game guides of some variety. But yeah, the moment to moment stuff was much different than modern games. I haven't broken out a notepad to sketch clues and make notes like I did for Myst bitd.
jhnystvns@reddit
Up up down down
Tootsie_r0lla@reddit
L R L R Up Up Down
ImOnlyHereForTheCoC@reddit
JUSTIN BAILEY
nirreskeya@reddit
Just be sure to use the L-R shoulder buttons on Gradius III.
seamurbile@reddit
These guys have obviously never watched my son play Celeste.
GoldDeloreanDoors@reddit
beatlefreak_1981@reddit
I was recently playing some Nintendo games with my sister and niece. My sister and I were having a blast re-trying these games after so many years, but my niece got bored after an hour.
She was totally new to the concept of lives, ect and kept asking, "Where do I spawn?" and my sister finally said, You dont you're out of lives!
Scrapla1@reddit
We used cheat codes and Game Genie. When it comes to patience I can tell you 80s and 90s game only tested mine. We had magazines with maps and guides and I'm pretty sure most games back then had a map built in.
chazysciota@reddit
Pretending that playing Bubble Bobble makes you superior to someone who plays Overwatch is the final decent into boomerdom. This shit is LAME with a massive, throbbing L.
illini02@reddit
Yes, you could get them. But they weren't the default, I think that is the issue.
I had Nintendo Power. I had some of those cheat code books. All that is true.
But now, the default is, if you are lost, you will have an NPC tell you where to go, or a voice giving you hints. That shit didn't exist in Zelda and Metroid. It was literally trial and error
Reasonable-Wave8093@reddit
even when i was older, being lost in Zelda Wind Waker was just part of it!
Sumeriandawn@reddit
More than half of gamers play multiplayer games. Playing against a great player/team isn’t a challenge?
illini02@reddit
I think the arguments made for a mutliplayer and single player game are very different ones.
Online multiplayer games are built to just go on forever, because you can always find new opponents.
Even at the height of me playing Mario Kart and Goldeneye, eventually everyone in the room would've played with everyone else and it would fizzle out.
Reasonable-Wave8093@reddit
I never did, nor did i have any magaxines. Aby tricks came from another kid.
Z0na@reddit
Remember when games came with an instruction manual?
CorgiKnightStudios@reddit
And when I tried to make a game like the ones from the 90's, the gaming industry crushed me in marketing.
The industry is lobotomizing what video games are and nobody is stopping them.
foozebox@reddit
It’s also why so so many kids are afraid to try new things because they don’t want to risk losing. It’s about the worst trait you can have.
Rich-Violinist-7263@reddit
So true. I think there is some truth to learning some resilience. I’m competitive but I really just enjoy to play, any game really. I’m just happy I can interact, connect and share an experience.
-Boston-Terrier-@reddit
I feel like it speaks to the study that they included Tetris in the list of games that had no map. Well, yeah, no shit. You don't go anywhere in Tetris.
I'm all for shitting on young people but it seems like the author of this study just cherry picked a handful of video games to make his or her point. Sure, kids today play Fortnight and Minecraft which go on forever while we played Sonic and Mario which had definitive ending but we also played a shit ton of The Sims, Sim City, and Rollercoaster Tycoon which went on forever while kids today still play a ton of Sonic and Mario that have definitive endings.
I would argue that video games today are far more difficult - in a good way. Our games were difficult in the sense that we had shit controls and worse level design. Dark Souls is hard but never unfair. It forces you to learn how to beat bosses but, once you figure it out, it becomes easy to do every time.
Rich-Violinist-7263@reddit
For me personally, when we made the jump to PlayStation and Xbox, that is when it changed. Yes, I played a shitload if Sims… I was in my early 20’s by then thou. I also remember playing that, addictively because there was no clean “get out point.” There was always something else to do. With Tetris you can “one more game” yourself a bit.
fuzbuckle@reddit
007-373-5963. Now dodge those uppercuts. ABACABB - Blood for the blood god. Justin Bailey - Fuck off Mother Brain.
inactionupclose@reddit
Ah yes, and all of my Colecovision games were known to have unlimited lives.
Geek_King@reddit
Nice to see another fellow Colecovision player!
Sethatos@reddit
Man I hated that controller! But Zaxxon was great
inactionupclose@reddit
Zaxxon was amazing. I remember buying both a steering wheel for Turbo and Dukes of Hazard as well as the Super Action controller which was amazing.
fuzbuckle@reddit
Smurfs, Star Trek, and was it space fury, those were all pretty dope.
Sassafrass_3@reddit
I remember when reapawning in online games became a thing and didn't care for it. I died. I don't just come back, I gotta wait until the next game. That's why I loved the first few Socom games. When you die, you're dead until the next round. And we can't win if you're dead so don't die.
Glittering-Active978@reddit
The fact that I'm learning this from a 2 minute tiktok on reddit though...
__3Username20__@reddit
I see what you’re saying, but at the same time, I really truly did already know most of this. The part specifically about the hippocampus I didn’t know, but all the parts about consequence, memory, rewards vs addiction, couch co-op, etc, I’ve been saying all that for many years now, and I know I’m not the only one.
SOME of this has been broadly spoken about for many years, but not in these kind of scientific (and actually useful/helpful) terms. The headlines were always something like “Everquest/World of Warcraft/Minecraft are the devil’s games, meant to corrupt our youth!” When the truth is really that they are designed to be played, and keep being played, for that sweet subscription and expansion money (and eventually microtransaction money, too).
Everquest and WoW at least originally had some of these unforgiving elements, that taught us risk management, patience, skill, problem-solving, and reward for accomplishing a difficult task. I totally see why games are made the way they are now, it was the natural progression of it all, but these guys nailed it: for anyone growing up playing new AAA games with a lot of their free time, and not ever playing through old games, it will certainly be totally different for their brain/development.
cat_at_the_keyboard@reddit
Ultima Online predates WoW and EQ and UO players considered at least WoW players to be total care bears.
UO could be brutal, if you died your soul left your body and you had to find a healer somewhere to revive you while your body and ALL of the stuff you had on you started to decay. IIRC you had 10 minutes before your body turned to dust and you lost all your stuff.
Also players could steal from your body or just walk up and steal from you while you're alive. Players could murder other players as well. It was like the wild west of online gaming. I played it at around age 12-13 and fucking loved it.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Roklam@reddit
Piccoroz@reddit
I would argue that games are more social now than before, I had only 2 or 3 friends that were really into videogames, with the rest I had to engage in other activities, today I can see kids have a lot more friends that really share their interest.
taleofbenji@reddit
Playing games like King's Quest wired my brain in a particular way. Whenever I visit a new restaurant or business I've never been to before, I feel like I've reached a new level in the game.
Dimeskis@reddit
This 1990s kid would never have had the patience to beat almost any boss in Dark Souls or Elden Ring or any other “Souls like” games.
TakingYourHand@reddit
And what leads you to believe that?
Dimeskis@reddit
Because my son was/is obsessed with souls games and he plays them in the living room.
bmaasse@reddit
That's funny because I was able to push through games like Elden Ring and Wukong by relying on the fact that I was able to beat Tyson in Punch Out and OG Ninja Gaiden as a kid.
MS_GundamWings@reddit
the higher level of handholding in moderns games reduce the amount of executive functioning required to be successful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LojDvrwBcUU&t=152s
lukin5@reddit
Damn, ain’t all that the truth though.
And howabout where they’re talking about, he’s good at this part, let him do it..
viralust@reddit
The communal aspect to local gaming was the most fun and probably most beneficial part of gaming back then, but it was cut out because profit was more important than the quality of life of people. Apparently, making products that in anyway benefit people is just not as profitable. Digital media ownership changed drastically, mergers, acquisitions, and eventually monetization became top priority. Were barreling towards oxygen subscriptions at this rate. That's what happens when every aspect of society is consumed by the greed and indifference of the ruling class and it's only gonna get worse. Addiction is more profitable that a fun experience. The oppression and injustice we fought and won against in video games is here and we aren't gonna do shit about it.
Ultimate-Flexionator@reddit
I get it, but not for nothin... Doom not only had a map, it had automap power up lol. And you still couldn't fucking remember how to get through half those shitty.later levels!
Long-Screen-4745@reddit
What happened to two player racing games?
KeySatisfaction197@reddit
The 90s also made a God out of that one kid in your school that could get past the certain level of a game. Example: the bike level of Battletoads.
Matchew024@reddit
This totally tracks.
statistacktic@reddit
I see and live it. And the community people get is the pile on bashing and complaining about the game. We are cultivating victim mentality.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
There is also a whole social aspect that is lost in gaming. Giving up on a game, telling everyone on the playground that it sucked until some guy you barely know is like "it was easy, I did this--" and so on. Going over each other's houses because we didn't have all the consoles, etc. Videogames weren't meant to be something you spam your mind with. When we had them, we would f around two hours, die or get stuck, then go outside. It wasn't until Team Fortress Classic, where it was fake social, communicating with dozens of people you would never meet, where I played long enough to skip meals.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Jeez, straight fire. But there is a little more to it
I get so frustrated when my son gives up on a game just to make easy Mario Maker levels. My daughter prefers to cause chaos rather than beat the game. When I tell them the fun is in the challenge, they ask me to beat it for them which is beside the point.
Pretty much, there is something in the Alpha culture which makes them want to challenges in general. It truly wouldn't matter if Minecraft/Roblox did not exist because they are who they are, and fot the nost part, we did not make them this way.
loztriforce@reddit
I was born in '80 and if I had a kid I would only provide them with the same level of tech I had when I was a kid, until they were a teenager: so no digital tech until about age 5, introduce to Nintendo around age 6, give them a SNES at 11yo, and so on.