News Forum - Thailand set to become ASEAN’s gaming hub, says Thailand Game Show organisers

[Thaiger]

With its burgeoning gaming sector, Thailand is poised to become the gaming hub of the ASEAN region, according to organisers at the Thailand Game Show 2023. The nation’s gaming industry, valued at 30 billion baht (US$ 822,368,400), is leading in Southeast Asia and ranks 20th globally. In addition to boasting impressive user numbers and hosting … …

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[Karolyn]

Games are shit these days. I remember when they were fresh, and youthful. Now its basement dwellers over age 30, and car theft games, and murder simulators. Meaning visually realistic gun violence fantasies. 

Nowadays its all pathetic and disgusting, it was 'going 3D' that made it shite. The graohics, overall, on a PlayStation or a Saturn, were actually uglier, than the average SNES or Megadrive title. 'Classics' like Tomb Raider and Crash Bandicoot were awful, next to Sonic, Suoer Mario, Strider etc. Maybe because I'm a bit dyspraxic, but thats not uncommon, is it?

Gaming in the cukture merged into awful lad culture, the sort of British bullshit, you want to escape from, when you're importing straight from Japan. I remember it as annoying gobshites, playing FIFA and racers, none too seriously.

That and installing PC games, which you didn't on the Amiga, god forbid. Both PlayStation and PC games usually came on gold discs, covered with unintelligible, black, pen scrawl.

Since then only the DS has been worth owning. Bangai-O, Bleach Dark Souls, Ouendan, Ketsui Death Label... quite a few titles, and region free. I remember buying a Wii, and being disappointed: people bought tgem only to stick them back in the box.

The Wii pointer and the menu, were too annoying to use, the 'mouse' would disappear from thecedge of the screen. I actually imported thongs like Muramasa, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, and Shikigami no Shiro, hoping to live out again, my old 90s gaming days of Japonophilia. I was disapoointed.

Also as years passed, I don't have motor skills anymore. Probably this is part lack of practice, and part aging, and part illness. I used to be very good at them, by the time of tge Wii I wasn't, I couldn't get back into them, and I found I didn't care. Some things you should try and leave in the past.

Things in pop culture, by their nature, are products of times and places, returning to gaming felt wrong, and not enjoyable. It reminded me my own aging and health, and the original buzz and relevance, that I remembered, was long gone. Of course, they weren't new anymore. Not cuttingvedge. People weren't playing the sorts of things I was familiar with. 

Nowadays I hate video games, and the sort of adult people who own games consoles. Meh. Put them back to what they used to be. The sort of design where you could play in short doses of what we now call' casual play', yet the same title, could entertain you for hours. Literally.

Because the design was based on the coin-ops, where play had to be fun and intuitive, yet profitability relied on hooking the player to feed money in. And 'hardcore gaming' back then without online, meant things like importing from Japan, or following the industry. 

But they won't repair it, because they looked down at us. Lets be honest, it was teenage stuff for the Brits, and if you look at the Famicom and NES - which never caught on in Europe - they were, literally, aimed largely (not entirely) kids younger than teens. Games for adults? Well look what happened, because they changed things to be like that.