I've thought a lot about the different kinds of video games there are, and how features or aspects that some love others don't care about at all or actively hate. I can't remember that dipshit from a few years ago who would make a new thread every day about how stories in games don't matter, but as more and more AAA games are collapsing and seem to be deliberately leaving out the aspects of games that gamers actually like, it got me thinking about those aspects and how ones personality affects their gaming habits, and why you might call a game a masterpiece while I think it's boring, while another game might be my all time favorite and you can list 20 things wrong with it.

So without mentioning the games themselves, I started thinking about the basic gamer personality types, or the most core aspects of a game that appeal to them and why that draws them to some games and not others. If you've got more to add, than by all means do so.

In no particular order, first, human competition. People who get a thrill about competing against other people. If it weren't video games, it would be football or basketball or MMA or some other activity where you pit yourself against another or several other people to be simply better than them. A video game just happens to be how you do it. The game itself is basically just an advanced rubix cube in one of those timed competitions. It's the thing that you use to see if you're better than someone else at that thing.

The second one is harder to describe, but it's almost like the player pitting themselves against the game programmer. Like solving a puzzle or getting good at lockpicking, the player sees the game as a complex series of challenges to overcome. The more they play and the better they get, they win against the design of the game itself. The narrative, characters, themes, etc are just amusing window dressing so that it doesn't seem like you're doing the same thing all the time. What amounts to getting really skilled at pressing a series of plastic buttons in a particular order, but the thrill comes from the design of the game, which comes from the mind of the designer. He created a series of challenges that are accomplished with pressing those plastic buttons, but all the cues from things on the screen, figuring out what the coding behind the scenes must be for A action to lead to B reaction, memorizing long sequences of events or actions you must perform, and being able to do it all from memory very quickly. Basically trying to beat the code without being able to see the code, only the effects of it.

Third, pure escapism. Being able to shut yourself out of real life and be dropped into a world that doesn't exist. How you do it matters less than what you're doing while you're there. The gameplay itself is just a vehicle to deliver the immersive escapist experience. You can't actually be that person on the screen in that cooler world doing awesome stuff, you have to pilot that avatar somehow, and gameplay is the means you do it, but so long as it gets the job done, it gets tuned out in favor of losing yourself in being someone else somewhere else. Though a caveat on that is that sometimes for a niche group of games, the gameplay does enhance that experience. Think a sim like DCS where you have to actually know how to program the MFD of a real life F-18 to be able to do it in the game. You have to know when and how to turn on the APU in real life to be able to do it in the game. The game is as close to a 1:1 replication of the real life actions, just through plastic buttons. This is why things like HOTAS setups and personal flightsim rigs are popular, because losing yourself in the guise of a rea pilot or racecar driver or soldier or whatever is enhanced by making more like real life. It's not difficulty for difficulty's sake, it's difficulty because that's how it really is in real life. But the end result is still similar to someone who dives into a gameplay-light RPG or single player story; being able to forget you're you sitting on a couch or chair and losing yourself in pretending to be someone else doing something else you would never be able to do otherwise.

If you can describe any others, which I'm sure I've missed, by all means chime in. But I think that if one of these personality types for lack of a better term, appeals to you while another does not at all, that can explain why you might like a game and be utterly incapable of wrapping your head around why anyone could possible enjoy a different game. Take the first Last of Us game. Objectively mediocre game play, light stealth, light FPS, light puzzle solving. A solid 6/10 when compared to other games that do stealth better, or shooting better, or puzzles better. And for these accurate reasons, a lot of gamers just simply don't get why anyone would like it. Yet it's considered one of the most favored games of all time for others. A direct contrast to that would be a Soulslike game, for the opposite reasons. The gameplay is the game. But very few people likely find themselves sitting alone in a room a few hours later after finishing it still feeling deep emotions about how the story and characters made them feel.

The hilarious thing about the collapse of the AAA industry is how they are shitting the bed on all of those things. The stories and characters are shit, focused more on diversity than good writing or compelling characters and in many cases the stories and characters are written specifically and deliberately to make you feel bad about liking something similar from a decade ago (see Last of Us pt 2, all of the emotions you might have gotten from that story arc with the main two characters, the sequel was written to undermine all of it and spit in your face for having reacted the way you did to the original). The gameplay is designed by people who would be hard pressed to beat a game from 20 years ago on Journalist mode, full of bugs, features and quality of life aspects that are universally understood to be superior for a decade simply removed without a thought, and with all of the live-service bullshit, speech codes, removal of chat, matchmaking systems that are designed first and foremost to make queers not feel bad, rip the heart out of human competition.