Back when I wasted money on games, I bought shit like Garry’s Mod, PUBG, Rust, etc. because I knew some people who played it and thought we could play together.
It never happened.
So they’re collecting dust in my library and now I only play single player games
My friends used to like to try a different voxel sandbox survival game every week. Since gaming was really the only time we ever got together, me getting sick of that was really the first thing that drove a wedge between us.
This happened to me, except it was my friends transitioning to increasingly competitive games. We used to just like… fuck around in TF2 or Garrysmod. Then they got into competitive CS:GO and MOBAs. Everyone seemed so miserable and I’d try to suggest a cooperative or casual game and we’d play it for 30 minutes and a few would bail because there was no “progression” or “challenge”.
Now I pretty much exclusively play single player games. Got sick of the toxicity. I’m a lot less closer to those friends unfortunately. All but one of them completely stopped playing competitive games.
Then they got into competitive CS:GO and MOBAs. Everyone seemed so miserable and I’d try to suggest a cooperative or casual game and we’d play it for 30 minutes and a few would bail because there was no “progression” or “challenge”.
I think games like Heroes of Hammerwatch and Risk of Rain solve this problem pretty well.
A huge problem I think people find with videogames over time is that after a bit of experience you eventually hit a point where nothing feels “fresh” without being challenging. You want to lose. You want to get better and try new tactics and find new ways to be better and better. You want to learn and adapt.
A lot of games simply are too easy for experienced people, and this is where competitive games fill a gap not provided by many other games. Human opponents become the challenge.
Games where you are supposed to lose many many many times before eventually winning solve for this issue. Giving a good feeling of progression and challenge.
