Hardcore gamer = someone who plays only cinematic grizzed white dude games and/or military fetishizing FPS
Casual gamer = anyone that is not a 15-25 yo male, and/or plays anything outside of the previously mentioned games, especially if those games are colorful.
So basically the gaming community is full of gatekeeping, misogyny, toxic masculinity and general chuddery. They make sure they're the loudest voice heard when anything about games is talked about, and won't be happy until all games a homogenous stream of bland, hyper-realistic but with a grey filter slog of mindless action with no heart or soul. And don't you dare force them to read any dialogue or story.
I think the early 2000s PS2 era was the peak of modern gaming. Colourful games, decent 3d graphics. The FPS era hadn't fully began on consoles yet.
The less said about the late 2000s, the better. That's when all the "gatekeeping, misogyny, toxic masculinity and general chuddery" really got kicked into overdrive. Every game got a sepia piss filter as well. And after that we got the blue filters which were somehow even worse.
Oh god I am in an eternal struggle against the „creatives“ and their constant use of disgusting filters which destroy the natural colors. Tho I must confess I loved the golden filter of deus ex human revolution and the grain filter of ME1 and yes even the brownish tints of dragon age, I know I am bad haha.
Honestly some games benefitted from the piss filter, like Fallout New Vegas. If it were made with modern graphics I would want them to keep the piss filter instead of being vibrant like Fallou4 76
Filters have their place tbh. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense aesthetically.
The issue is falling back on it to the point it becomes a meme.
I think if you are making a depressingly sad game (like Dragon Age) then yeah using the shit brown filter to make it feel even more grimy works
I am currently doing a replay of like old rpgs and I‘ve finished dragon age like a month ago, personally I didn’t find like sad at all, maybe if you like get the worst outcomes, the only thing that made me go „huh“ was when characters tell like random tales and they go „…and then they were brutally assaulted and murdered“ which often feelt like a bit edgy for edgys sake. Also like why would anyone defile the ashes? Tbf the brown filter did work for me only in like certain areas.
Yeah Dragon Age really hammed up the "wow this ain't your grandpas fantasy game" quite a bit (though I geuss the Witcher eventually took that place with Witcher 2 and 3). I do like that Dragon age Inquisition dropped a bit of that edge though it ended up with a lot of bioware bloat
I like the piss filter in need for speed most wanted, but I think thats the only game I liked with it.
As much as people meme call of duty, they actually never used that filter in the original modern warfare games. COD4 was pale, MW2 added saturation, and MW3 was a combination of the two. But the worst colour filter has to be battlefield 3 and the blue filter.
Omg yes the blue filters are the worst, since they became synonymous with grizzled badass troy backer hero and bro-shooter archetype of the early 2000-10s