While researching women’s experiences in multiplayer video games recently, I came across this thread on the subreddit about Bungie’s latest live shooter, Marathon. “I’ve played a lot of shooters, and as a feminine-presenting player tbh it’s often a struggle,” it reads. “I’ve heard all the ‘get back to the kitchen’ jokes … But Marathon has been completely different, guys. I haven’t had a single issue, people have been incredibly kind and helpful… The community feels genuinely welcoming to everyone.”
The top-voted reply? “Benefit of being an unc game.”
What the heck is an unc game? It didn’t take me long to discover that “unc” (short for uncle) is the latest semi-disparaging gen Z name for anyone over about 30. Further back, it originated as AAVE slang. “Uncslop” refers to the implicitly terrible games beloved by this older generation of players; basically anything made in the 1990s or 2000s, from Knights of the Old Republic to World of Warcraft. An unc game, then, is a game predominantly played by millennials (and older) – and Marathon is one of them. A week or so later, I read Emanuel Maiberg’s article for 404 Media, which dug into the game’s unc credentials.
I’ve been waiting a long time for this cultural milestone: the point at which video games have been around long enough for old games (and older gamers) to become fundamentally embarrassing. I’m totally here for it – long live the unc game. May uncs enjoy slower-paced shooters and 12- to 15-hour cinematic narrative games for ever, while simultaneously decrying the frenetic pace and aesthetic overwhelm of young-people games. This is the eternal generational cycle, and it should be embraced and enjoyed.
Developers and publishers should consider embracing the unc game, too. The eternal chase for ever-increasing profits has caused large swathes of the games industry to pivot towards hugely expensive and risky live-service games or quasi-exploitative free-to-play timesinks – which have wrought havoc on the sustainability of the sector. Meanwhile, the unc demographic – older, time-poor, but also wealthier – has been propping up gaming’s traditional business model for years. Uncs buy consoles. Uncs are used to spending money on games. Adult gamers are a profitable demographic – maybe people should keep making games for us?
Roughly 50-60% of all gamers are over 30. The average age has been creeping up for a decade, and is now 41. Circana data suggests that 97% – 97%! – of console purchasers in the US last year were over 25. The natural conclusion is that this is a problem for long-established players in the gaming industry, who are failing to reach young audiences, or pricing them out – and that is true to an extent. But older gamers aren’t dying out – they’re playing into their 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond. I would like to posit that it’s OK to also make things explicitly for this demographic, just as the rest of the cultural world does. It’s not an either-or situation.
Because gaming is such a neophilic pastime, there is always a sense that, as the new world is born, the old one must die. But gaming has become intergenerational. Media outlets such as Time Extension and game-developers such as Digital Eclipse are now supported entirely by people’s sustained interest in retro games. Each week sees releases of new games that play with, pay homage to, and build on the ideas and aesthetics of influential 1990s and 00s video games . And even as the influencer economy has killed off a lot of old media,many of the writers, video essayists and streamers covering games are at least old enough to remember what Banjo-Kazooie was.
If you’re rapidly approaching middle age – or are already there – and worried that the gaming world will soon leave you behind, take comfort: I suspect that unc games are not going anywhere.
What to play
An old-school platformer with superb modern stagecraft, Darwin’s Paradox! feels like a playable family-favourite film, starring a troublesome octopus who ends up sabotaging a suspicious megacorp and discovering its not-very-well-concealed secret.
All of the favourite features of a bygone gaming era are here – long stealth sections, insta-deaths, some annoying checkpointing – and there are some fun octopus-specific abilities to bust out in dicey situations, such as camouflage and, of course, ink.
It’s a surprisingly hard play, even for this veteran of 2D puzzle-platformer games, but its excellent animation, a slapstick sense of humour and detailed sets made me want to persevere. Well, that and my children, who insisted on watching me play every night until we finished it, laughing whenever poor Darwin went splat.
Available on: PS5, Xbox, PC, Switch 2
Estimated playtime: about five hours
What to read
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The Verge reports that Xbox’s new boss, Asha Sharma, has sent an internal memo round Xbox employees that says Xbox Game Pass has become too expensive. (The subscription fee went up by almost 50% late last year.) This suggests that Game Pass pricing might come down soon – but I fear we might get an ad-supported version instead. Or perhaps they’ll just take Call of Duty off the service.
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In video-game movie news, FromSoftware’s gothic-horror masterpiece Bloodborne is being developed as an animated film by Sony Pictures. Somewhat surprisingly, it is being produced by the YouTuber Jacksepticeye, whom I mostly remember as the guy with green hair who did a lot of screaming over Five Nights at Freddy’s videos, which I watched back when my stepson was little.
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4A Games, the Ukrainian studio that relocated to Malta after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is to reveal the next game in its much loved post-apocalyptic Metro series tomorrow: Metro 2039.
What to click
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‘Seeking connection’: the video game where players stopped shooting and started talking
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Hacker group threatens to release Grand Theft Auto VI data in Rockstar Games attack
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Parents are helping their children bypass Roblox age checks and play as adults
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‘This craving to go viral is tiresome’: the artists on the pressure to promote on social media
Question Block
This week’s question comes from Jamie:
“I’m assuming the first £100, $100 or €100 game is near, and I believe that GTAVI will be it. Do you think people will buy a £100 base game in the current [economic] climate? I remember Mega Drive games being £50 new, so is a £100 game really so bad after 30 years of progress?”
Adjusted for inflation, the Nintendo 64 cartridges that I bought a couple of times a year with my pocket money would cost £97 each today. So no, a £100 video game is not that outrageous, especially considering how much more the average video game now costs to produce. New PS5 games and Switch 2 games regularly retail for £60 or even £70, at least at first. Microsoft’s The Outer Worlds 2 was due to retail for $80, but the company u-turned on the price after backlash.
The $100 (or £80) mark is a mental barrier that no company has yet been brave enough to cross. The rumour that Grand Theft Auto VI will be the first $100 game is pure speculation by analysts, but I won’t be surprised if it does happen. Frankly, I would rather pay the occasional £80-100 for a top-end game than have all of gaming reduced to phone games, subscription services and Roblox. Besides, everyactivity my family does seems to cost me £100 for a few hours – in that context, video games still feel like pretty good value.
What’s most likely, I think, is that games will come at different price points, from £10-15 indie games all the way up to £80-100 blockbusters on the PlayStation 6, whenever that comes out. Those who can, and who want to, will spend plenty money on consoles and high-end games, and those who don’t will be able to game more cheaply via subscriptions, free-to-play and Steam sales. (Please, never take Steam sales away from us.)
If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.