I believe that gaming is so fundamentally different now. Twitch, YouTube and other services have produced instant access to streams of the best players in the world and thousands of players crowd sourcing all of their knowledge online in discord, comment sections, subreddits, YouTube, and wherever else…
it’s produced a phenomenon where a community for a game inevitably speed runs everything about it within like 7 days. Any new meta or piece of content can go from novel to completely documented in no time at all.
This changes the way developers think about competitive gaming and even cool story games where you might hide Easter eggs. It changes how they build the game and their choices.
The onus is on the player to actively not seek that info out in games. And in competitive shooters that is to their detriment.
I’m just an old guy yelling at clouds, but it removed some of the magic of the experience when now you just Google (game)“current meta”
This reminds me of ARMS, a fighting game by Nintendo (they tried to launch a new IP).
A couple of months after the game came out the best player of the game got crushed at an event … by a developer of the game.
Having been playing online games since the practically the advent of them, nothing in that area has really changed. We had guides and frag videos even back in the days of Doom and even community support forums and chat rooms for MUDs and MUSHes in the real early days.
What’s really changed is that the space has grown. More people playing games means more people are also showing tips and tricks for games along with better technology allowing for better guides.
Yes, but the size matters. And the prevalence and reach those top tier info sharers have. Now it’s not even a question of whether or not you run into people playing with that knowledge. It’s assured in every competitive game in nearly every match.
A personal example would be halo 2 jump tech. A friend of mine showed me a few videos on 2005 YouTube showcasing cool jumps on lockout and a few other maps (not super bouncing, different things).
I was able to leverage that for like the entire life of halo 2 online with people rarely ever understanding what I was doing.
Today everyone everywhere would know that because the biggest halo streamers would make it so common.
Hang on now… at the advent of games we didn’t have an internet. Doom was the high days of gaming, but games were played more than a decade before that. If you wanted a guide you had to mail order it from a catalog. So yeah, access to information about games has changed a lot. A game like the original bard’s tale on the commodore 64 could use riddles as a part of the game because you couldn’t just go look up the answer. Can’t do that anymore.
Yeah I’m not so sure about that. I played Bards Tale when it came out and yes of course I did a lot of my own research, etc. but that kind information still got around in the form of BBSes, magazines, AOL, CompuServe and of course word of mouth. Everyone knew the Contra code despite the lack of ubiquitous internet.
My son just got a switch for Christmas, and his uncle leant him a bunch of games including Breath of the Wild.
Since the hype is over, we can game without spoilers. It’s really nice. I feel like I’m playing Ocarina of Time again, where we have to just use our wits rather than rely on people to figure it out for us.
Yes, I could look up how to do things, but I’ve resisted so far. It makes it a lot more fun.
So far, though, I find the puzzles pretty easy and somewhat feel like devs have watered everything down as a result of the non-thinking gaming being much more prevalent
I also was last to BotW. I had it and then didn’t play it for 3+ years, maybe 5. I think I received it before my son was born. I finished it before he turned 6.
Anyway, I enjoyed it, but it was less about figuring stuff out and more about the adventure. I did enjoy the puzzles in the area-based dungeons and a few of the shrines. I nearly always forgot about one of the abilities.
I’m considering the expansion pack subscription just so I can catch up on all the Zeldas I missed in my 20s. There’s a lot of good games there I need to play
Yes, you have a point. I didn’t want to pay the money, but I do want to play the games. I missed SS and WW. I have OoT and TP, but my N64 needs to be cleaned and my Wii isn’t hooked up right now.
I feel the same about this. For me, It kills the best aspect of games, the playful learning. You just can’t go into any competitive game today without reading meta or you get crushed. But this is my free time. I want to spend it like that and just be creative and find my own solution to problems and still stand a realistic chance without having to have a second job studying the games meta. It’s the try and error discovery that made games fun for me and the feeling when you found your unique way to do things and others couldn’t counter it easily. But today it’s just about mastering a technique somebody else showed you.
You’re exactly right. The playful learning. It’s so bad now that sometimes just knowing you haven’t googled the most optimal way to play can linger in your head and ruin the experience lmao
That’s because what’s “meta” is more about popularity in games that are actually well balanced. Everyone may be using X because it’s easy to do well with; but if X is weak to Y and everyone is playing as X, you would likely do better with Y since X is weak to it.
I want to know what a majority of people are using not so I can use it myself; but so I can find the best way to defeat it. To me, that’s what “playing the meta” is supposed to mean; thinking about what the other player is gonna do, so I can avoid it/anticipate it and work around it.
I believe that gaming is so fundamentally different now. Twitch, YouTube and other services have produced instant access to streams of the best players in the world and thousands of players crowd sourcing all of their knowledge online in discord, comment sections, subreddits, YouTube, and wherever else…
it’s produced a phenomenon where a community for a game inevitably speed runs everything about it within like 7 days. Any new meta or piece of content can go from novel to completely documented in no time at all.
This changes the way developers think about competitive gaming and even cool story games where you might hide Easter eggs. It changes how they build the game and their choices.
The onus is on the player to actively not seek that info out in games. And in competitive shooters that is to their detriment.
I’m just an old guy yelling at clouds, but it removed some of the magic of the experience when now you just Google (game)“current meta”
This reminds me of ARMS, a fighting game by Nintendo (they tried to launch a new IP).
A couple of months after the game came out the best player of the game got crushed at an event … by a developer of the game.
Having been playing online games since the practically the advent of them, nothing in that area has really changed. We had guides and frag videos even back in the days of Doom and even community support forums and chat rooms for MUDs and MUSHes in the real early days.
What’s really changed is that the space has grown. More people playing games means more people are also showing tips and tricks for games along with better technology allowing for better guides.
Yes, but the size matters. And the prevalence and reach those top tier info sharers have. Now it’s not even a question of whether or not you run into people playing with that knowledge. It’s assured in every competitive game in nearly every match.
A personal example would be halo 2 jump tech. A friend of mine showed me a few videos on 2005 YouTube showcasing cool jumps on lockout and a few other maps (not super bouncing, different things).
I was able to leverage that for like the entire life of halo 2 online with people rarely ever understanding what I was doing.
Today everyone everywhere would know that because the biggest halo streamers would make it so common.
Hang on now… at the advent of games we didn’t have an internet. Doom was the high days of gaming, but games were played more than a decade before that. If you wanted a guide you had to mail order it from a catalog. So yeah, access to information about games has changed a lot. A game like the original bard’s tale on the commodore 64 could use riddles as a part of the game because you couldn’t just go look up the answer. Can’t do that anymore.
Yeah I’m not so sure about that. I played Bards Tale when it came out and yes of course I did a lot of my own research, etc. but that kind information still got around in the form of BBSes, magazines, AOL, CompuServe and of course word of mouth. Everyone knew the Contra code despite the lack of ubiquitous internet.
The advent of online multiplayer, not gaming itself.
My son just got a switch for Christmas, and his uncle leant him a bunch of games including Breath of the Wild.
Since the hype is over, we can game without spoilers. It’s really nice. I feel like I’m playing Ocarina of Time again, where we have to just use our wits rather than rely on people to figure it out for us.
Yes, I could look up how to do things, but I’ve resisted so far. It makes it a lot more fun.
So far, though, I find the puzzles pretty easy and somewhat feel like devs have watered everything down as a result of the non-thinking gaming being much more prevalent
I mean I sincerely hope you’re smarter now than when you played ocarina :p
I also was last to BotW. I had it and then didn’t play it for 3+ years, maybe 5. I think I received it before my son was born. I finished it before he turned 6.
Anyway, I enjoyed it, but it was less about figuring stuff out and more about the adventure. I did enjoy the puzzles in the area-based dungeons and a few of the shrines. I nearly always forgot about one of the abilities.
I’m considering the expansion pack subscription just so I can catch up on all the Zeldas I missed in my 20s. There’s a lot of good games there I need to play
Yes, you have a point. I didn’t want to pay the money, but I do want to play the games. I missed SS and WW. I have OoT and TP, but my N64 needs to be cleaned and my Wii isn’t hooked up right now.
I feel the same about this. For me, It kills the best aspect of games, the playful learning. You just can’t go into any competitive game today without reading meta or you get crushed. But this is my free time. I want to spend it like that and just be creative and find my own solution to problems and still stand a realistic chance without having to have a second job studying the games meta. It’s the try and error discovery that made games fun for me and the feeling when you found your unique way to do things and others couldn’t counter it easily. But today it’s just about mastering a technique somebody else showed you.
You’re exactly right. The playful learning. It’s so bad now that sometimes just knowing you haven’t googled the most optimal way to play can linger in your head and ruin the experience lmao
I’ve found that meta isn’t usually what’s best anyway, meta is usually some combination of good and easy to use/pull off.
Some metas feel like they are caused by content creators hyping something up because they had some good games with that setup.
That’s because what’s “meta” is more about popularity in games that are actually well balanced. Everyone may be using X because it’s easy to do well with; but if X is weak to Y and everyone is playing as X, you would likely do better with Y since X is weak to it.
I want to know what a majority of people are using not so I can use it myself; but so I can find the best way to defeat it. To me, that’s what “playing the meta” is supposed to mean; thinking about what the other player is gonna do, so I can avoid it/anticipate it and work around it.