For me, there is plenty of indie stuff out there to play for the years to come. The majority of AAA publishers doesn't interest me anymore, they are plain and simple dogshit. And that's a fact.

I'm quite a bit older than you, but I see what you mean, it's just that you started putting things in perspective, and let's face it most internet gaming-related dramas are not worth all the cyber rage they usually generate.

Don't worry, you're just getting wiser, shouldn't hurt too much ;-)

Anyway, as you become wiser you'll notice there are smarter ways of influencing the big publishers, the most important one being voting with your wallet.

As far as I'm concerned, I certainly haven't lost my passion for gaming but I did start having a weird relationship with video games.

I perhaps read even more about new games and gaming as a medium now thatn I used to, but of course with my work, family etc. I have much less time to actually play games.

What happens is that the little time that is left for gaming can sometimes become awkward as I'm spending way too much time wondering what I'll play next. I have a huge backlog, and I know all games in that backlog are games I'm very likely to enjoy because I've read a lot about all of them (plus I know my tastes quite well), but I just can't seem to decide what I'm going to start.

Kinda like a weird case of writer's block. Once I started I can't stop, I was amazed when I realized I had clocked 88 hours in Wasteland 2, I enjoyed it so much that time just flew so I know my enjoyment of gaming is still intact.

Don't let online retards destroy your love and passion for games. Forget about gaming "scandals", #gamergate, PCMASTERRACE, and all the other crap. Come and join the beautiful side of life, where people celebrate games in positive ways.

EDIT: I'll give you some invite in a few hours.

If you are thinking I use GOG Galaxy sadly I do not. I see no need for it until it comes out of Beta and something of interest comes that requires me to use Galaxy.

Nope, Steam group.

Remember that I am called "Lord Bear" on steam.

Yeah, it's kind of like flash mobs went entirely off the rails and turned into actual mobs. I tend to think that social media is probably one of the worst applications of the internet ever. Sure, things like myspace and Facebook started off innocuously enough, but the worst part of public/social media IS the public/society.

That said, I also prefer to speak with my wallet, as opposed to writing hateful things on Twitter these days. If a company wants my money, they'll deliver a fun and functional product. If they don't, oh well. No loss for me!

Just ignore it. "Gaming culture" as people would have you believe it to be, are a few hundred people with loud mouths who do this or that and the media clings to them.

That's not gaming culture. That's the same old money-culture that the rest of the media works with. They get incendiary and loud in order to draw people over to click ads.

True gaming culture is you and your friend enjoying a beer or lemonade on your front porch and reminiscing on Golden Eye and talking about the new MOBA that reminds you of it. And then scheduling a time to play and enjoy it.

That's a sub-culture inside of a much broader culture. And it's where gaming belongs. People shouldn't live for gaming. That's just a let-down of a life. But gaming is all about having some fun and/or experiencing something new and unique.

Let them keep their "culture." And quit clicking on their ads. :)

The Youtube and Steam generation of gamers and critics have turned most media-consuming gamers into fundamentalists, and you can't reason with a fundamentalist. In the end there's no such thing as a 'gaming culture', its just you and your collection of games.

The sad part about it is that in the game industry you really have alternatives.

Ad-block and scriptblockers and ghostery, huzzah!
Generally, the big "issues" that gaming "culture" deals with are just fluff. "This game offends me, that game isn't what we like". The REAL issues, like getting ripped off or how licences are controlled.. these get swept under the rug by people who say "don't worry about, life is all good". Until you wake up and your society has undergone a quite revolution and you don't particularly like where it went. If you don't like what is going on with the REAL issues, SAY SOMETHING. It doesn't hurt and it might free your mind a bit, and open it up to what is really going on around us.

Yes and YES!\

My top issues:

- games sent to market that aren't ready to be played
- DRM
- Licensing and selling games made inside the license period but can't be sold outside of it.
- GOG forums and Galaxy not working :)
- Games treated with licenses instead of right of first purchase (I think that's what it's called -- I think they should be treated like books)

All in all, though, I just don't care much. If I want to play a game, I get it. I play it. I move on. If I can get it DRM-free, I do. And I've been burned so many times on new purchases that I very rarely buy brand new games.

You're getting old and jaded. Congrats. Means you went a good while without dying. Keep it up.

I always think rationally before posting something and I'm always trying to present facts. Here's an example: I've tried to say why didn't anyone said anything when Microsoft, or a different company treated their employees bad, and almost everyone said to me, that it's in the past, but when I've said that no one, or almost no one said anything about it, they didn't know what to say anymore. Sure, the Konami thing is a real mess, and this all started when they removed Kojima's name from the box art, which in my opinion he shouldn't even have his name there from the start, but that's another topic for another time. This isn't the first time, nor will be the last time when employees are being treated badly. It's a sad truth, but there's nothing to do. Even now there are plenty of huge or small companies who treats their employees really bad, but we rarely hear about those because of all the secrets they have to keep to not get sued. Not to mention that Japan's culture and how they treat people is really different than ours.
If people would think rational before posting something we would have a lot less of angry/rage-inducing posts we have, but you know, with the internet they think that they can say anything without repercussions. I wonder how many of those said something really bad to someone's face in real life!
Besides, nowadays if someone says something almost everyone will jump on that bandwagon and do the same.
I didn't liked how the Mass Effect trilogy ended, but I didn't do nothing, because it wasn't my vision or my writing, it was theirs. It's only natural to not like everything there is.

Are you and OneFiercePuppy brothers?