Good stories that trigger introspection, characters you can relate to or sympathize with, fun gameplay with no consequences, ultra-realistic graphics, immersive environments, or just a cozy game to cool off after a long day, choose your drug.

Here's a few I can vouch for, my inclination is towards narrative-driven and fast-paced combat:

- Death Stranding

- Deus Ex: Human Revolution (and sequel Mankind Divided)

- God of War Greek Trilogy

- Prince of Persia Trilogy

- Call of Duty Modern Warfare (Original trilogy)

- Assassin's Creed 2 (and sequels Brotherhood, Revelations)

- Devil May Cry 4

- Prototype

- Battlefield 3

Or you can sample from the hottest names and zoom in on what you enjoy the most:

- Cyberpunk 2077

- Elden Ring

- Baldur's Gate 3

- Starfield

- Ghost of Tsushima

- Final Fantasy XVI, VII Remake

Or maybe check out titles that have stood the test of time:

- God of War

- Mass Effect Trilogy

- NieR: Automata

- Metal Gear Solid V

- Resident Evil 4

- Detroit: Become Human

- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

- Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

- Red Dead Redemption 2

Perhaps you're just not playing the right games?Perhaps you're not reading the right authors? You gotta narrow it down a little, what's not exciting? Is it the cost to joy ratio of the console/graphics card/hardware? Overcommercialization? Why would this make games dead? Board gaming is growing rapidly, have you tried playing physical games? What kind of meaning do you seek? Can you give examples? Are you asking a rhetorical question or do you actually want to find answers? Cheers, M

When I want to watch a movie I don't just watch a movie as random. Do I want something like airplane? Or do I want an epic like LOTR or do I want action a la John Wick?

Same with games. Depends what you are looking for at the time.

Yes, since quite some time... It's oversaturated as hell and mostly copies of <current trend>. If you're a part of a community of yonder, be glad and stick to what you have. It's not built to last.

> What about meaning? Is there any reason a busy adult should be playing any games?

Fun?

Every time I ask myself this, I end up popping Dark Souls into the Xbox and losing the rest of my evening.

> What about meaning?

What about it? Do you seek a deeper meaning in every film you watch and every book you read? Sometimes trashy action is perfectly fine. There are plenty of narrative games too, if that's your cup of tea (not mine).

That old desert shooter Spec Ops: The Line was based on the Heart of Darkness book, for example, and BioShock is basically Atlas Shrugged. I'm sure there are newer, deeper titles, but it's not my genre of choice. Frostpunk 2 is a city builder where everything goes to shit all the time, and it's a bit like watching Snowpiercer in that sort of bleak apocalyptic way.

> Is there any reason a busy adult should be playing any games?

It can be a nice break from work and social activities. They can be fun, social, addicting, relaxing, whatever.

> Is the technology exciting anymore?

Is web technology exciting? Film and camera tech? Any tech? Anything?

Gaming is just a mature industry now, with small incremental gains instead of huge leaps, along with a busy indie scene (the COVID bubble bursting and mass layoffs really hurt that, though).

> What is an exciting new game?

What do you like in a game, if anything? If nothing, maybe gaming just isn't for you. Nothing wrong with that.

Personally, I grew tired of single-player narrative games a while ago, but Baldur's Gate 3 is an excellent title by any metric. And you can play through it without focusing on the story if you wish. I skipped every cutscene and killed everyone and still had a blast.

Been on an action RPG kick lately, between Diablo IV, Path of Exile, and Last Epoch. It's not a dramatically different experience than the first few Diablos way back when, but the builds these days are a lot more interesting. The designers have really gotten the complex synergies between items, skills, and passives down these days, but it's a lot of time investment and watching things blow up.

I also really enjoy factory games, and the recent Shapez 2 is a lot of fun if you like basic programming concepts and optimizing pipelines and parallelization, etc.

Meanwhile my partner loves digital board games like Wingspan, and she's been trying to get into BG3 as well (which is also kinda a digital board game, I guess).

My friends are often playing MOBAs.

Choose your poison. Or don't. Outside is nice too :) But the gaming industry is producing a lot of great works these days, if a bit oversaturated and repetitive.

All the AAA games are just the same now. Essentially - almost same game mechanics with different 3d models and textures.

Is cinema dead? Is TV dead? What does “dead” mean for a medium?