Early 30's here. By chance I got really into Fortnite from nearly the moment the BR mode launched, but have also "quit" it multiple times, most recently yesterday. It has an interesting core idea for PVP multiplayer(build as you fight) that is submerged beneath a morass of marketing-driven ideas(BR gameplay, vehicles, rare overpowered items, etc.). But they keep changing the game at a reckless pace, so I keep coming back. On the most recent occasion I was really enjoying the "high explosives 50v50" mode which removed all the regular guns and most of the items, leaving a very Quake-esque experience where you had grenades, rocket launchers and grappling hooks, plus building to shield yourself, in the context of a large teams battle.

But then they swapped it out for another mode yesterday and I got pissed off by the hitscan and sniper weapons(which of course are the preference of cheaters). It was a much less satisfying experience.

I've heard this about marketing other media: that it's hard to target older audiences because their tastes diverge more. Teenagers remain teenagers each year, and will reliably fall for the same scenarios and stories with a fresh coat of paint. And I don't think games are any different, in that games where you shoot things, go on a quest or adventure, solve puzzles, gain power and wealth, and compete against others have all been reliably popular in every era, in a multitude of permutations. A popular, accessible video game has to have an appropriate mix of fantasy (what you imagine you do) and reality (the actions you actually perform which should cohere with the stated fantasy). A mismatch of the two makes for incoherent gobbledegook.

So the challenge game developers face(and aren't fully aware of, since most folks trying their hand at it are still young game fans themselves) is in doing something that's actually differentiated while maintaining a compelling marketing message. If it leans too much on the usual tropes, any kind of underlying design wizardry is obscured. If it looks too "weird", it becomes hard to engage with on the level of fantasy.

After getting annoyed with Fortnite last night, I sampled a few other recent games. First I tried free-to-play "Dreadnought", in which you control a giant spaceship in slow-paced team battles. I got annoyed immediately by the opacity of the strategy: it threw a bunch of different classes of ships at me and told me to pick one and not worry, basically. The game was bulked up with systems upon systems that were clearly intended to hold my attention for the long term, but without knowing what to focus on, and not really feeling the core fantasy in what I had right in front of me, I just played it like it was homework and then stopped after about an hour. This is a very typical reaction I have to AAA experiences: they're overconfident in their ability to stall me by leaning on levels and unlocks and item loadouts and so forth, instead of communicating something about how I should start appreciating the game.

Then I went on itch.io and after browsing tried "Skitopia", a ski resort management sim. Even though it's an indie project at a proof-of-concept level of development, has almost no features and started experiencing GC thrashing after about 50 guests, I was having a good time building chairlifts and ski runs.

Indie games would be amazing if they could all just hit the mark like that, but that's the exception, of course. Most of them lose their way in trying to be mini-AAA experiences, so they both communicate nothing and do it poorly.