I think people who claim “gaming is dead” are just burnt out of games. Doing anything for long enough requires you to take a new perspective eventually, otherwise it feels so samey.
Whenever someone talks about how “games aren’t fun anymore” and such I always think they either need to take a break and do something else or completely change the way they look at/play games, maybe with a different genre, franchise, era, challenge runs such as speedruns or fan mods, and so on.
I find open world games quite tiring in general, but unfortunately a lot of my favourite games are also open world.
I tend to split them up with other games. Like I finished Death Stranding, then played Death’s Door before moving onto Horizon Forbidden West. Like little palate cleansers between main courses.
I think the pacing is the main issue. With open world it’s easy to get stuck in a loop of clearing pointless icons or side quests off a map, figuring you’ll have to do them eventually anyway, but before you get access to a better toolkit of fun, or get invested in a story. Should I do those tasks now with a handful of bland abilities, or later with better toys (but now it’s too easy because it was designed for beginners)?
The agony of choice.
