Tangent: It's amazing that the popularity of XP to "level up" and HP to bring to zero has become. This was a new concept to me way back when Final Fantasy 3 (3 in the US, I think 6 in Japan) came out. It felt very niche and reserved for a specific type of game. Now those ideas are everywhere.

What's a common new game trend since then? I can think of these: randomized microtransaction packs, online multiplayer PvP and co-op.

Are there any established trends that I'm missing out on, or new concepts emerging that old gamers may not have come across?

The Battle Royale genre (Fortnite, PUBG, ect.) is the biggest new genre I can think of. The 100 player last-man-standing game mode probably wouldn't have been possible without the advancements in networking speed and infrastructure in the last 15ish years.

I was just wondering today why the BR format has taken over in recent years and I can't really come up with a technical reason for it. Red orchestra had 64 player pvp matches back in 2006 and I think Arma had similar sized game modes in that era too. I could see a BR mod for either of those, but it didn't happen (or at least take off). Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it seems feasible.

I think the gaming world just really latches onto tends. A few years it was survival/crafting games, before that RPG's. Good luck figuring out what's next!

From personal observation and experience, I believe the BR game mode got some traction after the first Hunger Games movie released. After that movie released, I remember all sorts of "Hunger Games" Minecraft maps appearing online. I downloaded, played and hosted a handful of these Hunger Games "last man standing" maps for family and friends to play.

After a few weeks of that, the game format grew stale, and I stopped playing HG maps. Then a few years later a whole bunch of BR games hit the scene and all I could think of was how similar they were to the Hunger Games Minecraft maps.

That's just my guess from personal experience.

Interesting! I remember playing DotA as a custom map on Warcraft 3, then being amazed to see the League of Legends and DotA2 communities grow so large. I had no idea that the battle royal games started in Minecraft. That's fun to know.

The modern Battle Royale mode evolved from multiplayer mods for Minecraft and then ARMA made shortly after the 2012 movie Hunger Games which provided the essential ideas all together (elimination, lots of players, must explore a huge map for items).

I think Minecraft can't be overrated as a vehicle for experimentation in multiplayer modes. Not only did the game have a huge modding and multiplayer community and have support for large player counts and maps, but it's unusually easy to create for and the game itself has no built-in structured competitive multiplayer gametypes, which means there's tons of demand for people to make gametypes from scratch and there's no built-in code for how matches work that needs to be worked around for new ideas to be attempted. Many other online games have specific ideas of how matches work built-in that reduce the demand for brand new gametypes and could make implementing a gametype where matches work differently daunting.

Wasn't PUBG originally an Arma3 mod?

- Early access. Back in the day the dev would pay you with a free copy of the game for helping with the beta. Now you pay the dev for the privilege of helping with the beta.

- Cosmetics. Tons of games have stuff you can buy (equipment, skins, etc.) to make your character look cool. Extra stuff that can be developed easily by an artist, doesn't affect game balance, and sometimes even costs real money.

- Battle pass. I've never bought one but I think you get stuff on two tracks for progression, a free track and a paid track. Progression resets and there are new tracks like 4 times a year or something. Makes people want to open their wallets for the paid track due to FOMO and "...but I already earned it!"

I think if you switch from free to paid you immediately get all the stuff on the paid track you've already progressed past. Also I think they want to charge you $10 four times a year, every time the new tracks come out.

- itch.io -- Sort of like Steam / Epic / GOG for indie developers too small to be on those sites yet.

Crafting is absolutely everywhere, as is some kind of level up system (attributes/skills/perks/traits/etc...).

Procedural generation was supposed to be big and exciting.

If done incorrectly, though, procedurally generated quests or dungeons feel boring and soulless.

Oh yeah, and terrain deformation! Cool concepts. I'm not sure which ones do it well. The Diablo series seemed cool, but now it just kinda seems like "yeah, it's more and more and more of the same", even though some of it is procedurally generated.

Most of those are hardly Switch exclusive.

I like the Switch, but it definitely chugs, and I suspect had we not had the supply chain meltdown over the pandemic we would‘ve gotten a more significant hardware refresh.

As far as simulators go, I‘m playing Two Point Campus, and it definitely chugs and crashes occasionally.

A lot of the best 3rd party switch games are ports from PC games or games available on other consoles: spelunky, shovel knight, cup head.

I think the technical imitations can definitely hamstring their games, even the first party ones. breath of the wild comes to mind, and frequently dips into sub 30 fps which breaks the immersion factor.

Play different games, Ori, Tunic etc are both bright & colourful and yet somehow manage to be heart-wrenching at the same time.

Yes you don't need PC hardware to play those but non-console gaming environments are also about no lock-in, customisability etc as well.

You're right though - you don't need a fancy GPU to have a fun game, but what you DO need is permission from Nintendo to publish on their platform.

But that's your choice. Almost all of my PC games are 4X and turn based RPGs. All of them make heavy use of a mouse and keyboard. And in addition, you don't need stupid 4 slot cards to play them.