I know what you mean. What people expect from games has somewhat changed. I have a bunch of posts on my research on this topic. I made a recent post called FlashBack Games. Gave me that old feeling again, when games used to be an enjoyable pastime.

Games are a social outlet. But I my first issue with the way games were going is that they were pushing the socializing to the internet. So, you are not in the same room with the people you are playing against. I think this destroys the social part a little. And so Microsoft and Sony are trying to make up for the part they are missing by connecting you more over the internet. So now you can see people and talk to them more. Still they are not in the same room as you are. So now you have Project Morpheus, which tries to make up for it even more.

The feeling this gives me is the feeling I get about the Reality Distortion Field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

Games used to be more fun (not hours of cursing and swearing because some guy keeps getting head shots on you). And games used to be a way for people to spend time together, and hangout. But the internet and this digital personality avatar anti-social socialization has split up people more than anything.

My mom texts me instead of coming and talking to me, and we are in the same house. A cyber bully talks all kinds of stuff over Facebook, but in school he doesn't say a word to defend himself.

I am a casual gamer for that reason.

I play games with other people, simply to have a reason to hangout and do something, but not all day every day.

If you can make a game that brings back that childhood feeling of fun, then that is what you should go for. Create a game that brings people together, not separate them.

You see the issue Zynga is perhaps unintentionally creating by taking down its game.

My favorite games right now are:

-Super Sonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars

-Knack

-- Contrast

were far more attractive than game challenges.

Exactly! A lot of the challenge is gone for the appeasement of people who prefer to have things the easy way. Its more political than anything.

Another way games were used is to simulate life in order to teach life lessons. This is where the "experience" type games are coming from, although I really don't agree with the lessons many games teach.

But making games so easy teaches a lesson that life is easy. So without a challenge, we are ill-prepaired to face the real challenges in life. Chess isn't that popular anymore, but I learned a lot about strategy from it, and I apply it in real life.

A child used a strategy he learned from a game to save a person's life. etc.

Like most developers I play lots of games. In that sense, yes I am a gamer. However, a lot of people associate "gamer" with a particular gamer culture. That culture is heavily male, somewhat younger (mentally if not physically), racially heavily white, etc. These are the people you see active on forums and gaming news sites. I do not consider myself part of that culture and I don't want anything to do with that culture. I consider them to be poisonous and detrimental to the industry as a whole in practically every aspect.

Setting aside the culture aspect of things, I've found that I have more awareness of the trends in the industry that aren't the big AAA stuff, most of which is repetitive nonsense. Same as pop music or many movies. The interesting stuff is not happening, by and large, in the really mainstream visible stuff. We're lucky in that nowadays, indie and small studio games are more accessible than ever. It's so much easier to find quality indie work that is off the beaten path creatively, artistically, or gameplay wise than it was even five years ago.

That culture is heavily male, somewhat younger (mentally if not physically), racially heavily white, etc.

I saw a lecture on youtube where the guy gave the same description about people employed in the computer programming industry. Strange.

Unfortunately my dislike of DRM was becoming greater than the enjoyment I got from playing games. A few years ago I just kinda stopped caring about them, which seems sad.

The last games I played were most of the typical ID Software ones (Quake III, Wolf:ET). The last game I bought was Half-Life 2 but was so disgusted by the reactivation anytime I re-installed Windows that I think it was the last straw.

Since then I got interested in OSS platforms like Linux and BSD. At the time this greatly reduced the games available to me but did open up many other interests. Interests which are not governed by companies trying to suck every last penny out of their customers or companies that would rather alienate their customers in order to slightly inconvenience a few pirates.

Unfortunately now things like the 30 day "developer license" from Microsoft and the yearly device specific "provisioning profile" from Apple are starting to even make hobby programming suck and feel meaningless lol.

Edit: Although I do work for a games company, I still very much enjoy it because the productivity and software development side of it still provides many interesting problems to solve. Likewise I run the occasional lecture at a University and enjoy showing students how to develop their own stuff (in the hope that they will one day write an awesome DRM-free game that runs on BSD ;)